India’s new university entrance exam will not fix capacity or fairness

India’s spiralling number of university applicants has cast a spotlight on the unfairness of the admissions process to the country’s top universities.

Traditionally, admissions have been based on applicants’ performance in grade 12 examinations. The problem is that the different education boards that administer the exams around the country all have different evaluation and assessment criteria. Some boards are known to be lenient markers, while others are blamed for being exceedingly stringent, disadvantaging students in their regions. For example, more than 6,000 students scored 100 per cent in the Kerala State Examination Board assessments in 2021, allowing them to take a disproportionate share of seats in top Indian universities.

The Indian government responded in its National Education Policy, published in 2020, by mandating that higher education admission be conducted through a nationwide common entrance exam. And in March, the Ministry of Education announced that, from this year, undergraduate admissions to all 45 “central universities”, funded by the national government, must be via the new Common University Entrance Test (CUET).

This summer, about 1.5 million applicants sat the test – which may also be used by other categories of universities – in more than 500 cities in India and abroad. That already makes CUET the country's second biggest entrance exam, after the NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Examination) used by medical colleges and sat by 1.8 million students.

As well as levelling the playing field, it is argued that CUET, which is administered by the recently formed National Testing Agency, will streamline the admission process and help bring down skyrocketing grade 12 exam requirements for admissions, which reached 100 per cent for 10 courses at the University of Delhi in 2021.

Opponents of CUET, however, have various concerns. One relates to its format. The test, which assesses both general aptitude and subject-specific knowledge, is computer-based and automatically marked. That demands an entirely multiple-choice format. But critics argue that such questions are the worst way to evaluate applicants to programmes in humanities and social sciences; open-ended questions would offer students the opportunity to better demonstrate their critical thinking and creativity.

Critics also worry that the test undermines universities’ autonomy around admissions and puts secondary schools into a straitjacket whereby their performance is judged according to how many of their students crack the CUET and get into the top central universities. There are already concerns that exams such as the NEET and the AIEEE (All-India Engineering Entrance Examination) have incentivised the development of “dummy schools”, where students focus intensively on preparation for these particularly difficult exams. The risk is that CUET will turn all schools into gigantic exam coaching factories regardless of the subject that students want to pursue at university, resulting in genuine learning being neglected.

It is also feared that CUET will boost a private coaching industry that is already deemed a prerequisite for success in any national competitive exam (but not so much for grade 12 exams because of their more open format), further disadvantaging those who can’t afford to access it. CUET treats everyone alike, but this fails to take into consideration family and school background. The fear is that the test will promote uniformity instead of diversity in higher education, damaging social mobility.

Some suggest that a blend of CUET and board exam scores might be the way to go. But whatever admission method is chosen, the fact remains that most applicants to top universities will be rejected. And their failure will be blamed on poor performance in the test, rather than the inadequate capacity of India’s university system or the patchy performance of its school system.

What the country really needs is equitable educational opportunities: a common school and evaluation system that compensates for the effects of varied home backgrounds by providing additional academic support and scholarships for those who need them. In that way, school grades will become sufficiently credible that no one will feel the need to add to the burden on students by imposing a grand entrance examination that will only exacerbate disadvantage.

Gowhar Rashid Ganie is a PhD scholar specialising in the economics of education at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi.