Teachable moments

CUET has merit but pitfalls too

The University Grants Commission has taken a broadly sensible decision to hold a mandatory Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for undergraduate admission to all 45 centrally funded universities from the upcoming academic year. This means Class XII board exam marks will be superseded for determining university admission in favour of an all-India exam on the lines of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to technical undergraduate programmes or the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for undergraduate medical studies. A standardised test makes sense particularly in the context of the rampant grade inflation that occurs in board exams, yielding such improbable results as 99 or 100 per cent in English and history. This practice has led to universities setting unrealistically high cut-offs —often in the high nineties even for humanities subjects — as the basis for admission.

In that sense, the CUET will level the playing field to a great extent. Issues still remain to be clarified, like how the supernumerary admissions such as through the quota for sports and extra-curricular activities will be handled through the CUET. Apart from the practicalities such as the dates and structure of the exams, which the National Testing Agency will clarify in the first week of April, there is some confusion about the role of Class XII board exams in the admission process if the CUET supersedes them. There are hints that some colleges may require a minimum cut-off of, say, 50 per cent in addition to a CUET score but this, too, is unclear. As things stand, the syllabus for the exam will be the prescribed Class XII National Council of Educational Research and Training curriculum, which puts those states that conduct their own board exams at a disadvantage.

But by far the bigger issue the CUET must address is the nature of the exam. If it is designed to genuinely test aptitude and ability for undergraduate study then it must avoid the pitfall of following a set pattern of variable questions, eventually creating a set of standard Q&As that students merely have to learn by rote. This route will also have the unintended effect of driving demand for crammers or coaching classes of the type that have mushroomed to crack the JEE, NEET, or the central civil services exams. This flourishing coaching industry, as exemplified by such towns as Kota in Rajasthan that specialise in the business, has had a deleterious effect on the quality of the education system. Apart from turning out students who excel in the skill of passing exams rather than absorbing a real education, they can also impoverish students from middle-class or poor households with their exorbitant fees. The playing field in higher education, which already favours the wealthy, could well become even more uneven.

This apart, the CUET could end up downgrading the last two years of schooling, often the richest part of a student’s life when participation in extra-curricular activities and inter-school competitions tends to peak. All these non-academic activities, which go towards offering a rounded education, may well fall by the wayside as students focus on cramming for the CUET, just as they do for the NEET and JEE. To be meaningful, the CUET should focus on not perpetuating the limitations of the Indian education system, which continues to focus on rote learning and exam-cracking techniques.