Online CAT glitches thwart IIMs' overseas plans
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 05 January 2010, 22:14 IST   |    15 Comments
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Online CAT glitches thwart IIMs' overseas plans
Bangalore: Having failed in its debut attempt, the online common admission test (CAT) 2009 foils many ambitious plans of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). IIMs had plans to outsource the CAT deal worth $120 million to Prometric for a period of 15 years, before the fiasco, reports Economic Times. The IIMs have constituted a committee to assess the CAT tendering process, under which the $40-million CAT contract was outsourced to U.S.-based testing firm Prometric. As reported by Economic Times, sources who requested for anonymity said that the committee would decide whether to cancel or continue the contract with Prometric based on the findings of this committee. In fact, the IIMs had hoped to replicate the online model abroad, had it proved successful. "Right now, IIMs are making every effort to obey the directive given by the Ministry of Human Resources to conduct the exam for candidates who missed the test due to glitches," an official said. "CAT is synonymous with the IIM brand, and they wanted to take it to foreign countries like the graduate management admission test (GMAT)," said a person familiar with the development. IIMs had plans to generate additional revenue by conducting these exams abroad. The fee would have been costlier than the CAT exam fee here. IIMs mopped up over 30 crore by way of applications from the 2.41 lakh candidates. Officials claimed that nearly 20,000 candidates of the 2.41 lakh candidates across India had their exams rescheduled after problems, especially virus attacks, were found at testing labs across the country. As per CAT committee officials, about 24,000 students did not show up for the test and around 2,000 candidates are yet to be tested. Prometric said that over 2.15 lakh candidates have successfully completed the CAT test. IIMs have decided to participate fully in designing and implementing online CAT tests in future, rather than outsourcing the work to private hands. Prometric, which was organising the exams in association with NIIT, has been criticised for its poor handling. The committee, during its investigation, has come to know that Prometric had offloaded the entire delivery mechanism to Indian partner NIIT and did not check out whether they were prepared to handle this kind of responsibility. The sources said that it was Prometric that assured the IIMs that they could conduct the exam in 10 days compared to other vendors who said that the risks were high and they needed at least a 20-30 day window period. Also, the sources said that 19 vendors had shown interest to bag the high-profile contract. Reliance, Tatas, Aptech, Pearson VUE, Eduquity Career Technologies and Prometric were among the final bidders. Some officials had recommended that IIMs keep the Ministry of human resources department (MHRD) informed of the developments. However, the CAT committee stated that they were an independent body and did not need help from the MHRD.

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