Prof. Durgesh Mangeshkar

Background India is a diverse society having a broad spectrum of formal learners (students) in terms of academic, cultural, economic, ideological and social parameters. It is estimated that 65% of the Indian population is below the age of 35 and 54% of the population is below the age of 25. These statistics are often cited by experts as evidence of the ample demographic dividend that India as a nation has. This demographic dividend if encashed by India can catapult her to become a Superpower within two decades or less.  On the other hand, if India does not educate her youth well and does not equip them with employable skills, a demographic disaster is just around the corner as over 2 million youth are entering the job market every month in India ! The Education policies pursued by successive Indian Governments in the past 70 years have placed India in an unenviable position to lose this historic opportunity and precipitate a demographic disaster by 2020. The unprecedented man

WHAT HAPPENED ?   In 2010, the Board of Governors of Medical Council of India (MCI) proposed that a Single National Medical Entrance exam called NEET for all Medical colleges in India must be implemented across the nation. However, the decision was challenged by Private Medical colleges by filing over a 100 petitions in various High Courts of the country. The matter was combined into one unified petition and was adjudicated by the Supreme Court in July 2013. The NEET exam was struck down by the Supreme Court on July 28, 2013 in a 2:1 split judgement citing the reason that though NEET was good in intent, the MCI constitution did not empower it to conduct Entrance exams. Hence, NEET was not conducted in 2014 and 2015 and admissions to Medical colleges were done on the basis of various CETs and AIPMT exam.   However in a dramatic turn of events, the NEET was reinstated by a 5-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Dave on April 11, 2016. The Supreme Court ruled tha

The recent NEET controversy has triggered an extremely important nation-wide discussion on syllabus differences between several Boards and the urgent need to uniform the syllabus of all different Boards of the nation. There are 27 different Boards in India today for higher secondary courses and each Board has a different syllabus, text book and exam system.     The subject of Education is in the Concurrent List and hence both the Union Government and State Government are stakeholders in framing various policies pertaining to Education sector. Due to the advent of Entrance Exams for professional courses made compulsory by a Supreme Court ruling of October 2004, various Common Entrance Tests (CETs) at State and National level started for all professional courses in India.   In the past 5 years however, there have been attempts made by the Union Government to replace multiple CETs for one professional course by a Single National Entrance Exam. The recent case of NEET for Medica

The Entrance Exams to several professional courses like Engineering, Medicine, Architecture, Pharmacy, Pure Sciences etc. has Physics as one of the subjects. Physics is the foundation for learning almost all of Engineering and hence is an extremely important subject of Science. However, most aspirants of these Entrance exams struggle in studying Physics and find it tough. The least average marks in MHT-CET exam every year is in the subject of Physics. There are many reasons why Physics appears difficult to students and there are methods by which Physics can be made easy to learn. This article attempts to give an efficient approach to study Physics with ease.   1.  The first thing that must be appreciated about Physics is that it is a conceptual subject and solving problems in Physics means learning to apply the right concepts in an appropriate manner. Students struggle in Physics as they do not grasp the concepts in a systematic and rigorous manner.   2.  The other significan

One of the most critical and often neglected areas which hugely influence the Medical sector in any nation is the criterion for selection of candidates to pursue Medical education. In India, this criterion is in the form of Medical Entrance exams after Std.12 for admission to undergraduate courses towards MBBS / BHMS / BAMS / BDS degrees in about 381 Medical colleges which is the highest number of Medical colleges in the world. There are about 64000 Medical seats of which about 25000 seats are in Government Medical colleges. About 8 Lakh Medical aspirants vie for these 64000 seats every year and thus the average selection ratio is 1:13. There are more than 50 undergraduate Medical Entrance exams conducted by various State Governments, groups of private colleges and various agencies to these 381 Medical colleges due to which students and parents get confused and harassed to write so many exams. It has been observed that due to clash of dates and geographical distances and costs in

In the past 15 years, there are major changes every 2-years or so in the Engineering Entrance Exams scenario at State and National level. There are about 3500 Engineering colleges in India having about 18 lakh seats of which about 350 Engineering colleges and 1.5 lakh seats are available in Maharashtra alone. Every year, about 8 lakh seats remain vacant in India of which about 50000 seats remain vacant in Maharashtra alone !   It must be noted that hardly 60000 seats belong to A-grade Engineering colleges across India. The constant changes in admission rules create confusion in the minds of students, parents and teachers. This article attempts to lend clarity to the admissions criteria for different Engineering colleges for the year 2016.   1) IITs : Admission to the IITs is on the basis of JEE ADVANCED All India Ranks only. Additionally, the student must score atleast 75% marks Aggregate of 5 subjects in XII Boards as eligibility criteria for admission to the IITs. IITs have a