CUET: A leap for education

Ensure it is nimble, detail-oriented, and fair to India’s diverse cohort of college hopefuls

Sky high cutoffs, students with 100% scores jostling for seats and universities struggling to maintain parity between boards with wildly varying marking standards. These scenes may soon be consigned to history as India’s higher education regulator moved to formalise a standardised multiple-choice examination for central universities. The Common University Entrance Test, or CUET, is compulsory for undergraduate admissions in 51 central universities from this year.

The Central University Entrance Test, or CUET, is compulsory for undergraduate admissions in 51 central universities from this year. (HT File Photo)

There is no doubt the Indian higher education system has been in dire need of reform for decades now. As Class 12 marks have skyrocketed, so have the anxiety levels of parents and students, their desperation underlining the reality that only a handful of public universities can compete with global standards of teaching. That students with 90+ scores in Class 12 would almost certainly be denied admission at Tier-1 institutions or that higher education opportunities are increasingly concentrated in five or six metropolises show the need for standardising admission norms. But the architecture of the examination is of paramount importance. The government has announced that it will be conducted in 13 languages, which is a good move, but people administering the test will have to keep in mind that the pool of applicants is far more diverse than in any examination (say for engineering, legal or medical seats) currently run in India, and also such an examination for humanities subjects has never been conducted at the national level. Policymakers will have to ensure that this doesn’t lead to a mushrooming of coaching centres — a practice which ultimately harms holistic education, inculcates rote learning, and handicaps students from marginalised communities. And finally, the role of classroom learning and board examinations will have to be clarified, so that they don’t end up being hollow, perfunctory exercises.

CUET is a big leap, one that comes at a time when prominent universities across the world, and especially in the United States, are moving away from standardised testing over complaints that the system is biased against marginalised groups. How to best educate school students and evaluate them fairly has been an enduring puzzle of India’s higher education system. CUET will need to be nimble, detail oriented and, above all, just and unbiased to the diverse cohort that is the country’s college hopefuls.