As India readies for CUCET, here’s what we should do to make it work well

The year 2022 is a harbinger of change in the arena of higher education in India. Much needed changes are being deliberated on how to make higher education more effective, competitive and integrated with the demands of the times. Overhauling is being mulled to effectively deal with long-standing lacunae in the system. This can particularly be seen in the context of CUCET in central universities.

In the direction of reforming higher education, one of the recommendations of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, an important announcement was made enunciating that from the next academic session the admission to undergraduates programmes (UG) in all central universities would be done through a common entrance exam known as Central Universities Common Entrance Test or the CUCET. This would be in line with JEE and NEET conducted for admissions in engineering and medical education institutions across the country.

The CUCET, it was proposed, would be conducted from the year 2022-23 by the National Testing Agency as specified in para 4.42 of NEP 2020, which recommends a common entrance test for higher educational institutions. It was understood that, similarly, admission to postgraduate and PhD programmes in all central universities would also be done through CUCET from the session 2022-23. A forward move in many ways, CUCET raises some questions which need to be addressed before it is implemented.

The proposed CUCET, particularly with reference to the admission at the UG level, is structured to have two sections in the multiple-choice format — A and B. Part A would have questions based on General Awareness, Mathematical Aptitude and Analytical Skills, etc, while Part B would comprise of questions related to the subject-specific knowledge.

It is understood that the student attempting the exam of a given subject stream whether Humanities, Science or Commerce would take admission in that particular stream; i.e., if one writes the entrance test from Science or Humanities or Commerce stream, one is bound to take admission in the same stream as selected for the test. This is the system prevailing in most of the Indian universities. However, this arrangement is not in accordance with the spirit of NEP 2020 whereby it has been strongly recommended to end the stream restriction, thereby widening the scope of admission for the students.

NEP 2020 emphasises on multidisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity wherein a student from one stream will be enabled to move seamlessly to study the subjects of another stream. The horizons of knowledge would hence be broadened for the students. Fortunately, Delhi University (DU) is one of the few institutions where one gets the opportunity to change the stream even currently. This implies that a student who has passed the XIIth Board exam taking Science subjects, would have the opportunity, in DU, to take admission in Social Sciences or Humanities also at the UG level. However, merit would be calculated by deducting about 2 percent marks from the score obtained in the XIIth exam.

Keeping in mind the present circumstances, this system has become outdated and strikes as illogical. The system of calculating merit by deducting marks while changing the stream was devised when the marks of Science students in class XII used to be much higher than that of the students of Social Sciences and Humanities. But in the present system of Board examinations, often Social Sciences and Humanities students score higher than the Science students. In fact, if we look at the figures of the last 4-5 years, the toppers of XIIth, in some of the Boards like CBSE, are the students from Social Sciences and Humanities stream. This implies that there is no difference between the students of Social Sciences and Humanities stream from that of Science stream in terms of good scores in XIIth Boards.

In such a situation, preparing merit list by deducting marks if a student desires to switch streams at the UG level is not only unfair but also a violation of the spirit of NEP 2020. Hence, a clear provision must be made in the new system of admission through CUCET. First, even after passing XIIth from Science or Commerce stream and appearing in the examination of the same subjects in CUCET, admission would be open for the interested students in the subjects of Social Science and Humanities, etc. Second, even after changing the stream, marks obtained in CUCET would not be deducted while deciding the merit.

There may be some apprehension that the relaxation suggested above for the purpose of making the merit list during the admission process may expand opportunities for the students of Science or Commerce streams at the cost of those opting for Social Sciences and Humanities subjects. It may be felt that the students of Science or Commerce streams will occupy all the seats meant for the Social Sciences and Humanities students and the students of Social Sciences and Humanities will suffer as their specified number of seats would have been taken by the students belonging to the Science and Commerce streams, and their opportunity for gaining a seat in the central university shall be considerably reduced.

To rule out this situation where the students of Humanities and Social Sciences may be at a disadvantage, if any, it can be delineated that 50 percent of the seats in the Social Sciences and Humanities subjects would be strictly reserved for those taking the CUCET examination in the Social Sciences and Humanities subjects, and the remaining 50 percent seats would be open to all according to their merit in CUCET for admission in UG.

Admission to PhD and Masters programmes also, in all Central Universities, is likely to be routed through a common entrance test. In December 2021, a committee, constituted by the UGC also recommended that the National Eligibility Test (NET) should be the basis for admission to PhD programmes. Whatever may be the mode for the admission to PhD, whether it’s through NET or CUCET (currently CUCET is conducted for around a dozen and half universities), there is a serious problem in the examination structure of both. One of the major drawbacks in the current format, of NET or CUCET or the PhD entrance exams conducted independently by different universities, is their objective type MCQ (Multiple Choice Question) system of assessment.

It needs to be understood that different from the undergraduate programmes, which emphasise more on teaching and learning, PhD is purely a research programme that has different prerequisites from other courses. A PhD researcher must have the abilities and aptitudes like critical thinking, imagination, reasoning, capability of analysis and synthesis, apart from the maturity to take cognisance of any issue holistically, etc.

But, despite the efforts, it may not be possible to test these aptitudes through the MCQ system. It is only through the subjective essay type questions of analytical nature that the assessment for this level is possible; this holds true particularly for subjects falling under Social Sciences, Humanities, Commerce, Law, etc.

The educational superpower United States is a good example in this context. For admission to a Masters or a PhD programme in the US, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is taken into account. The GRE consists of, apart from various other components, analytical writing section as well, where one has to write two essays of different analytical grades on two topics, an Issue Task and an Argument Task.

It is about time that the Indian higher education system in its admission test to PhD programmes include the component of analytical type long answer questions or essays. As was the norm, till around one and half decades ago, long answer type questions were compulsory component of the NET exam along with the objective type questions.

One may argue that in Indian circumstances, given a large number of examinees and relatively less resources, the task of evaluating long answer questions or essays of analytical quality would be difficult. A possible solution to this issue could be that long answer questions or essays of only the top 20-30 percent of the scorers in the objective type paper should be evaluated so that only the best and deserving candidates join in PhD programmes. It is also necessary that merit list for PhD admission should be made by combining the marks of both the interview and the written exam. The weightage of the interview should not be more than 20-30 percent of the total and there must be a capping of minimum and maximum marks so that subjectivity and human interface is minimised.

If the Indian higher education has to make its mark at the international level, an important objective of NEP 2020, it will only be pragmatic to consider the above mentioned suggestions especially when there is time for the CUCET 2022-23.

The author is Dean, Planning and Professor of Hindi at University of Delhi. He has earlier taught in various American universities. Views expressed are personal.

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