The conducting of the computerised CAT (Common Admission Test) will go down in the annals of management education as a unique phenomenon, recounts Satish Y. Deodhar in one of the essays included in Nurturing Institutional Excellence: Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad , edited by Vijaya Sherry Chand and T. V. Rao (www.macmillanpublishersindia.com).
The core competency of management schools around the world is the teaching of, and research into, management sciences, and they do not specialise in the development and conducting of aptitude tests, he reasons. “Similarly, the Graduate Management Council (GMAC) which conducts GMAT, and Educational Testing Services (ETS) which owns GRE, do not get involved in college and/or university teaching, and research.”
Reminiscing about the first-ever computerised CAT, conducted in November 2009-January 2010, the author compares the peak load it took – about 2.4 lakh candidates in just a few days – with that of GMAT where the numbers are about the same but the test delivery load is spread quite thinly and evenly over the entire world and throughout the year.
For the first time, as Deodhar narrates, the IIMs did not print any booklets and bulletins – a single year's print order used to weigh more than 50 tonnes. “No envelopes, stamps, or franking were required for dispatch of admit cards, score cards, or any other information. All communication with candidates was handled through emails, and the professionally-managed official CAT Web site. ”
Of value is the cost comparison mentioned in the essay – that GMAT and GRE charge about Rs 10,000 for their test, while CAT was made available at merely Rs 700 to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates, and at Rs 1,400 to general candidates. Also, the CAT score is made available to all IIMs and about 150-plus non-IIM institutions, whereas GMAT/GRE scores are made available only to about four to five universities, with a hefty fee of Rs 1,300 charged for each additional score reporting. The author, therefore, frets that if only the IIMs could charge even half of what GRE and GMAT charge, we would be in a position to set newer standards in computerised test development and delivery.
Deodhar draws attention to the fact that there are no dedicated computerised test centres in India to handle large loads such as what CAT entails. “For GMAT, it is easy to register a candidate for a test at any of the dedicated test centres. For CAT, one had to build and scale up the computerised test centres for a brief period, and dismantle them after the test.” Since this peak-load arrangement can be very demanding on technology and logistics operations, he hopes that when a greater number of institutions (IITs, NITs, universities) opt for computerised tests, dedicated computerised testing centres would be available throughout the year.
Worthy collection of insightful essays.
Obsolescence built into our minds
The law of life cycles is one of big forces behind hyper-consumption, write Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers in What's Mine Is Yours: How collaborative consumption is changing the way we live (www.landmarkonthenet.com).
A section devoted to the above law opens by stating that mobile phones have now achieved the dubious status of having the shortest life cycle of any electronic consumer product. The authors inform that the average person in the US and the UK discards his or her mobile phone within 18 months of purchase, even though mobile phones will last for ten years on average; in Japan the time span from purchase to discard is merely a year. It can be startling to know that every year more than 130 million still-working mobile phones in the US and 15 million in the UK are retired, but it is only a small fraction that gets reassembled for reuse.
The iPod, in the authors' view, is not far behind the mobile phone in claiming ‘the shortest life cycle' crown. We are addicted to new products, say Botsman and Rogers. They cite Colin Campbell, a professor of sociology at the University of York, for the diagnosis – that we suffer from ‘neophilia,' where novelty-seeking is the new phenomenon. “Pre-modern societies tend to be suspicious of the novel. It is a feature of modernity that we are addicted to novelty.”
As a stark example of how obsolescence was built into our minds, the book traces the tale of how GM's Alfred Sloan launched Chevrolet by convincing his team ‘to restyle the body covering of what was essentially a nine-year-old piece of technology under the banner of product innovation.' The Chevrolet was a remarkable success and the idea of ‘perceived obsolescence' and ‘change for change's sake' was born, the authors note.
“GM went so far as to define its strategy as choreographed cosmetic ‘upgrades' to ‘Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.' In 1929, Charles Kettering, director of research for Sloan, wrote an article declaring, ‘The key to economic prosperity is the organised creation of dissatisfaction…'”
Prescribed pick for a joint reading session.
Primer on practical CNC
Numerical control is defined as a form of programmable automation in which the process is controlled by numbers, letters, and symbols, introduces K. Thamizharasan in CNC Programming & Operation. He delineates the basic components of numerical control system as program instructions, controller unit, and machine tool.
In a chapter on ‘part programming,' the author takes one through the different types of NC words, such as the N-words, as in the case of sequence numbers. “The program is executed from the lowest block number to the highest. It is customary to start with block N0005 or N0010 and proceed in steps of 5 or 10…” Among the other types or words are the G-word (preparatory function); X, Y, and Z words (coordinates); F-word (feed function); S-word (spindle speed function); T-word (tool selection function); and M-word (miscellaneous).
The author, who started off as an apprentice in Ashok Leyland, is currently a Worker Education Teacher in the company, and has trained about 3,000 employees in CNC operations.
Laudable effort.
Tailpiece
“Our design software is so creative that...”
“It creates modern art?”
“No, it writes up the accounts just the way we want, along with all the supporting vouchers!”