Dear colleagues, Apropos to the post on UGC Amendments (UGC-NET: Necessary Changes and Amendments - Madhurjyamoy Das), I second with the thoughts of my dear budding colleague. There is no doubt that the objective type questions provide transparency and a fair level playing, but they just ruin the basic tenets of education. The education is just not mugging facts and by heart some questions. It trains our mind to think intuitively, observe, analyse the observations and most importantly *interpret* and* express* the observations in a standard and unambiguous way. Unfortunately our educational setup has produced more mugging experts than thinkers. The exams (IIM-CAT and GATE) mentioned by my colleague are entrance examination for a course of study and not for a herculean task of teaching and research which involve independent thinking and analysis. In the case of entrance exams objective type questions can be justified as the session has to be started on time. Where UGC does not have any deadlines to meet. I think this is the reason till date UPSC for its IAS mains examination has not opted objective type questions. Here one can easily argue that the objective type questions can also be set intuitively to check the conceptual, analytical ability of a candidate. But after a period of time the questions start getting repeated and then again the mugging starts. This has been exemplified by the IIT JEE modification in 2002( the main exam was made objective), now the big cram shops have opened in every street. The point raised by my colleague that this objective type pattern will handle the problem of inter examiner varibality of marking third paper is baseless. As in the present system one answer sheet is checked by a panel of 12-13 experts and not by a single person and this is the reason for delay in the results. This delay can be justified if the quality evaluation is the cause of it. In my opinion, the only good decision of UGC of having national level test is everyday diluted by UGC itself and over the passage of time this will ruin the quality of NET and UGC. Rest UGC is known for changing policies frequently. With best regards -- Regards Vinit Kumar Assistant Professor, Dr. Ranganathan Institute of Library and Information Science Bundelkhand University Jhansi, U.P. 284128 Alt email: vinit@drtc.isibang.ac.in Home page: http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/~vinit =============== Join DLRG : http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/dlrg Submit your articles to LDL : https://drtc.isibang.ac.in/ -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.