Repairing CUET collateral damage

Mandated without adequate debate and preparation in the trademark style of the BJP/NDA government, the inaugural Common University Entrance Test (CUET) 2022 — promulgated as the sole exam for admission into undergraduate programmes of the country’s 45 Central universities — has made a disastrous debut, writes Summiya Yasmeen Mandated without adequate debate and preparation in the trademark style of the BJP/NDA government now mid-way through its second term in office at the Centre, the inaugural Common University Entrance Test (CUET) 2022 — promulgated on March 21 as the sole pan-India exam for admission into undergraduate programmes of the country’s 45 Central universities — has made a disastrous debut. The first phase of the exam held on July 15-20 in 554 cities countrywide was marked by chaos and confusion. The initial batch of 800,000 class XII students who wrote the new common exam for entry into top-ranked, low fees universities established and managed by the Central government, experienced high stress and anxiety. Delay in issuance of admit cards and last minute switches of exam centres resulted in thousands of students reporting at wrong centres where they were not admitted. Angry students and parents staged protests outside several exam centres in Delhi NCR, accusing the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts CUET, of mismanagement and bungling. It’s important to note that although mishandling of the inaugural CUET has made headline news, this common entrance test is for admission into 45 Central government varsities that constitute a small fraction (4.2 percent) of the country’s 1,055 universities. The remainder are relatively pricey private (39.7 percent) and low-ranked state government varsities. Therefore, well-funded Central government higher education institutions with superior infrastructure, high-quality faculty, well-maintained campuses and rock-bottom tuition and residence fees are the first choice of every higher-secondary student who has swotted for class XII school-leaving exams. And of the 45 Central universities, the most prized is Delhi University, particularly its routinely top-ranked undergrad colleges — St. Stephen’s, Miranda House, Sri Ram College of Commerce, among others. The intentions and objectives behind introduction of CUET are noble. It is the response of the University Grants Commission (UGC) — the apex level body which supervises and administers higher education countrywide — to the stress experienced by class XII students hitherto obliged to write multiple entrance exams, and popular colleges notifying sky-high cut-off percentages for admission into some study programmes. “In National Education Policy 2020, it is advocated that we should remove the multiplicity of entrance tests and have one single test so that students do not have to go through the difficulties of writing multiple entrance tests… with CUET, students can now write one single entrance test,” says Prof. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, a former professor at IIT-Delhi, vice chancellor of the top-ranked Jawaharlal Nehru University and incumbent chairperson of UGC. “Use of one entrance test for admissions in undergrad programmes has become a global phenomenon,” he adds. Given the relatively high-quality education provided by well-funded Central government universities at ridiculously low price, no sooner was CUET…