Olympics, NEET….
By Rajiv Gupta
Most readers will be familiar about the disqualification of Vinesh Phogat at the Paris Olympics 2024 where an extra 100 grams caused her to forfeit her match for the gold medal. Measurements are ubiquitous not just in sports such as wrestling and boxing, but in a number of other areas.
Student ability is measured by tests they need to take to decide their relative merit for admission to institutes of higher education. Employees are appraised, often on an annual basis, to determine who gets promoted and who gets a raise. Customer satisfaction is measured by companies to provide feedback for making changes to products and services. This would suggest that measurements are good and necessary. While measurements are useful, and several cases necessary, this article will discuss problems associated with measurements and why care needs to be taken in using them.
Let us go back to the case of Vinesh Phogat and the measurement of weight. Various articles have discussed how wrestlers go to tremendous lengths to try and get their weight to within the prescribed limits before their bout. This could include trying to lose weight through extreme measures including training with heavy hooded jackets and wet suits in heated environments to induce more sweat and forgoing all food and water to the point of near dehydration. These methods can lead to serious problems including muscle atrophy, and lower testosterone levels.
In 1997, three experienced collegiate wrestlers in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the US took some of these extreme steps. As a result, all became incommunicative and underwent cardiac arrest due to dehydration-related hyperthermia and died. Following this incident, the NCAA has taken steps to try and prevent such events in the future. These include restricting weight loss before a tournament to no more than 1.5 per cent of body weight per week and a minimum body fat percentage of 5 per cent. Athletes who violate these conditions are disqualified from competing in the weight category. In the Olympics, one is only concerned about meeting a strict weight limit. Perhaps there is something to be learned by the International Olympic Committee regarding dangers to the athletes’ health and well-being.
Perhaps underlying these measurements is a belief in quotations such as “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” which is incorrectly attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker. What this article will discuss is that measurement is often necessary, but we need to make sure that the measurement is correct for us to make the right decisions.
When names such as Peter Drucker get attached to a misquote, people often assume that there must be truth and wisdom behind the words. While Drucker was an advocate of measurement as a means to provide feedback so that improvement in performance could take place, he also believed that the people side of performance was equally, if not more, important as organisations need the collective functioning of people. And a lot of attributes of people, including motivation, ability and dedication cannot be adequately stated in terms of a single number as shown in the case of the Olympics wrestlers.
The recent uproar about the NEET exam and the alleged malpractices associated with it is another instance of measurement leading to poor, and in this case illegal, practices. There have been numerous such instances involving some form of large scale cheating associated with exams conducted for large numbers of people. In addition, entrance tests for admissions to a limited number of seats or for hiring in lucrative IAS and similar jobs create the demand for coaching institutes, whose only purpose is to prepare the test taker for an exam, not to educate him/her. So how do coaching institutes and the incidence of cheating reflect poorly on measurement? Let us take a look.
The focus of the entrance exams is on a single measurement, an applicant’s score on the exam. It assumes that a single exam lasting two-three hours, or in some cases multiple such exams as in the case of the IIT entrance exams, can assess the knowledge and capability of an applicant. With the number of open positions available being a fraction of the number of aspiring applicants, the pressure to succeed is very high. In a country with limited opportunities for its youth, this is an ideal recipe for unscrupulous methods to be used. When the stakes are very high, all it may take is a few people inside the system to devise a method to cheat. It becomes a lucrative business.
In addition to cheating, what these tests measure is not creativity, or the ability to think and solve problems in real time. Since everything boils down to one exam, the entire emphasis is on the ability to take the exam. Likely test questions based on past exams take the place of knowledge and understanding of principles.
Most American universities require a variety of measures, including high school performance, essay, recommendation letters, etc. which are considered for admission. It is more likely that a student getting admission to an American university is judged on a more wholistic basis than the method of selection used in India. It would appear that India prepares exam takers, not thinkers and innovators.
While it is tempting to choose a single measurement due to the ease of implementation, this should not preclude the need for a more wholistic measurement which would help provide feedback to improve the system. Measurement should provide feedback along multiple aspects that are important to the functioning of the system. Being focused on just one measurement not only misses the broader impact, but lends itself to poor practices as has been discussed in this article.
Eli Goldratt, who pioneered the Theory of Constraints, said “Tell me how you will measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave.” Measurement influences behaviour, but often only to improve the measurement and not the system. It is important that measurement provides useful feedback about the system which can lead to meaningful improvement. — INFA