Here's an update on this inititaive, which I wrote about earlier.
Well, the project is well underway. In fact, readers of this blog were the ones were the bakras who took the pilot survey. Based on your feedback, we then formulated a second, more comprehensive survey which is now being circulated within the engineering college community. The survey can be accessed here and is open to current students as well as those who have graduated in the year 2003 or after.
As I had mentioned the JAM survey aims to cover 250-300 colleges across India. In fact, I think that number will go up to 350.
66% of the survey is based on 'peer group ratings'. The remaining on feedback from the college management and Department of Technical Education. The survey is extremely transparent - no complicated formulas or calculations. Points are awarded for specific factors being present or absent and every college rated on a 100 point scale.
However, rather than a bland collection of statistics we will aim to provide some qualitative inputs. As well as some non-serious ones which capture the flavour of life in various colleges.
How you can help
This is an open source project. It can only be completed with your co operation and collaboration.
Firstly, we require a minimum of 30 responses from each college to arrive at a rating. I therefore request each of you who is eligible to fill the questionnaire to circulate it among batchmates, your egroup or orkut community to reach that number. The link is here.
By 30, I mean 30 seriously filled up questionnaires. We are inspecting what comes in and chucking out invalid/ fudged/ extreme responses. Yes, it would take about 15 minutes to fill the survey but anything less detailed would not be fair and would affect the credibility of the exercise!
Secondly, while no important institution will be left out, we are concentrating on 6 states with the maximum number of engineering colleges:
- Maharashtra
- Karnataka
- Tamil Nadu
- Andhra Pradesh
- Delhi NCR
- Uttar Pradesh
We need 3-5 volunteers per state who can help with propogating the survey among the engineering college communities.
You should be:
- a well networked person with friends and contacts in many colleges
- someone who can beg, bully and cajole people into getting what you say done!
What you will have to do:
- Just spend a little of your time, from home, online in doing this work.
What you will get:
Right now - nothing in terms of money. This project is a labour of love. It's a project JAM is doing to help and guide students. A huge and formidable task which we have embarked on because someone has to do it.
And while we may not have vast material resources to back us up, we have the passion and commitment to the end user which no one else does.
Yes, the objective is to eventually make some money doing so (capitalism zindabad!). But that's a few months away and until then I can only offer you more of an intellectual kick. A feeling of having done something towards the greater common good.
JAM t shirts / other such goodies will be sent out of course. But I am sure that you won't volunteer only for that! That's just a survey ka side-effect :)
If you would like to get involved as a Survey Evangelist, email me at rashmi_b@yahoo.com.
Thank you for your support so far. For more updates, watch this space!
