Today's news..

Its an imperfect world we live in, I agree, but there are some situations where we cannot afford imperfections or errors, specially when a few thousand students' lives, aspirations and careers depend on one exam. Finding three errors in the recently concluded CAT exam, in addition to the leak of the same exam paper a few years ago doesnt say much about the strictness with which this and other national exams are conducted. Give the students atleast something to respect in the educational system, let us begin by restoring national entrance exams to what they are meant for: to select potential candidates for their chosen careers. If we cannot even ensure that students can get a fair chance at appearing for national entrance exams, there is very little faith that an aspiring student has left in the system.

This is an appeal to all those who work to make our educational system better, please ensure that such things do not happen, otherwise it can cause further disillusionment among the student community. Among larger and long term implications of this cynicism could be in terms of the potential impact that erroneous selection procedures (such as leaked exams or typos in exams) have on eventual selection and placement of students in industry.

To begin with,the selection process is inherently fraught with all kinds of biases, both personal and methodological. While we can only use statistics or other methods to minimize biases, we can never totally eliminate the chance of some bias creeping in. And the first step in doing that is ensuring that someone proofread the final exam paper before its sent out for printing. That is the absolute least one can do.