Kolkata, Dec 04: A decision on extending or rescheduling the CAT will be taken once the entire process draws to a close on December 7, said Sekhar Chowdhury, Director of IIM-Calcutta.
“We are all aware of the problem. Right now we cannot take a decision on this. We will have to go through the entire process, collect information from Prometric and then take a decision,” said the director on the sidelines of an international finance conference in the city.
Chowdhury said the IIMs have demanded a full-fledged inquiry into the issue from Prometric — the company conducting the test — which will provide full information on the technical glitches after the entire examination process draws to a close.
This is the first time that authorities at the IIM-C have broken their silence over the issue.
Reports that the online test will be scrapped and written test will be conducted again this year have created panic among the students.
There are also reports stating that the CAT examination will be extended to accommodate all the students.
In Kolkata, on the first two days the online examination was severely hit by technical glitches.
Chowdhury said the IIMs were aware that there would be some problems but they were not sure how large the problem would be.
The director said that the problem faced by the students is a matter of concern and if he had been a student he would not have liked it either.
He said that he is in touch with Pankaj Chandra, director of IIM-Bangalore, who is looking into the issue on behalf of the directors, and Satish Deodhar, a professor of IIM-Ahmedabad and convenor of CAT examinations this year.
Due to the switch-over to the online examination system each IIM has also lost revenue of Rs 30-35 lakh.
“The idea of conducting online examination was to save time of our faculty members. The members were involved in conducting examinations — something that was not academic and not related to teaching and research. What we are aiming at is a research institute of international standard on management,” said Chowdhury, insisting that IIM-C does not mind loss of revenue.
–Agencies