CHENNAI: The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) proposal to merge three major entrance examinations NEET, JEE (Main) and CUET into one entrance test has certainly not gone down well with academicians and educationists in the State.
Many feel the merger of entrance tests will only create chaos and confusion among students and will harm the higher education scenario in the country. Though UGC envisages the idea of one entrance test with the aim that it will reduce the burden on students, academicians feel merging JEE and NEET with CUET is not practical.
“India is a country of diverse languages and cultures. Each state has its own educational issues. Despite this, the proposal for one single entrance test for UG arts courses, medicine and engineering is certainly not a wise decision,” said academician L Jawahar Nesan.
“We are conducting CUET and NEET in regional languages. Conducting one test for so many subjects, that too in different regional languages for each state, will be an uphill task and will be difficult to implement,” said Nesan.
Career guidance expert Jayprakash Gandhi feels UGC is blindly trying to follow Western countries. “Many American educational institutes provide admissions on basis of SAT scores but we cannot implement the same in India as our education system is different. Looking at the glitches that happened in the CUET test, it gives more reasons to believe that one single entrance test is not going to work in our country as it is hard to implement it in an error-free manner,” said Gandhi. He also expressed his angst against UGC making announcements about his proposals without properly weighing its consequences.
“Hundreds of students have called me to enquire about the merger of NEET, JEE with CUET. Students are asking me whether they should prepare for NEET for next year or if will they be merged. Until and unless there is any concrete roadmap, the UGC should refrain from making such announcements as it causes chaos among students,” said Gandhi.
Few educationists who believe in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 are also pessimistic about the implementation of one single test. “The technical and administrative glitches that occurred with CUET are not a good sign. If we are planning for bigger reforms we should have to be well-prepared for its error-free and efficient implementation. Students should not be at the suffering end of these experiments carried out by the system,” said K Sridharan, retired college principal.
‘Not practical’
Though UGC envisages the idea of one entrance test with the aim that it will reduce the burden on students, academicians feel merging JEE and NEET with CUET is not practical