Understanding the CUET fiasco

The Central University Entrance Test (CUET) was announced this year to meet the obligation of complying with the new National Education Policy 2020 promulgated by the government of India. The decision was also taken since the earlier system of admissions based on cut-off based calculation had got completely exposed last year by a particular state education board that had very liberally assigned hundred percent marks to a large number of students. It is true that there was no other way left to deal with the situation but to switch on to a common type of entrance test.

However, what has followed since then is not very encouraging and is far from being acceptable as satisfactory. Those who know the extremely complex admission process of Delhi University would agree that our admission process is arguably one of the most complex one in the world. It deals with hundreds of academic and non-academic subjects, core and elective classifications, hundreds of courses and thousands of combinations therein to seek admission into. I have always found it very difficult to make anyone understand the cut-off based admission method who had never followed the process very closely. Only with a great difficulty and some luck on our side, we were somehow used to limit the admissions within the sanctioned seats. But crossing the sanctioned seats and unable to maintain the exact reservation proportions for SC/ST/OBCs and others were also a usual part and parcel of this process. We needed a prophetic vision, statistical expertise and a shrewd calculative mind in each of the colleges and in the University to deal with such a gigantic exercise. Admission process of DU was never a smooth one and we had collectively succumbed to its complexity till about half a decade ago by allowing local freedom within the process. In the era of the earlier VC, Prof. Tyagi, who always lacked the desired administrative skills to run this complex University, an attempt was made to implement a university-wise uniform procedure to straighten the admission exercise using a centralized software. We did achieve some uniformity but we had to pay a huge cost for that. Admissions under the ECA and Sports has almost lost its earlier relevance. They are all now admitted as individuals and not as a team member leading to difficulties in building teams for better performances. While we were struggling with this centralized software, last year the cut-off based admission also lost its relevance in view of a large number of admission seekers having unbelievable and inexplicable level of hundred percent marks.

The decision of opting for a Common Test was indeed a welcome one and it was the only way to deal with the new challenge. But somewhere, we lost the plot probably because decisions were taken by those who did not have the complete knowledge of the complexity involved in our admission process and those local advisors, who were supposed to advise them honestly, turned blind implementers. Switching over to an entirely new and unexplored method and that too completely, was never advisable. The National Testing Agency is indeed the best available agency to carry out this very demanding task but the expectations were beyond their comprehension. The agency that has proven its capability on several other occasions failed to make realistic assessment of all the aspects of this task.

We should not have let the entire admission process that was evolved in more than half a century be dumped in a single stroke like this. One should have asked all the admission seekers to appear for a single common aptitude test, that was already in practice for those who wanted admission into the law and management undergraduate courses. Marks obtained in this one could have then been used as a multiplier to modify the marks obtained by the students in their twelfth board exams. After this modification the new marks could have been used in the same manner for providing admissions as it was being done earlier. Since both these processes, the CLAT/CAT kind of tests and our earlier admission procedure was in operation, we could have done admissions in a much better and smooth way. The modifying factor earned in their aptitude tests could have been used liberally to nullify the differences in the standard of different boards. One could have given as much weight to the Entrance test marks as desired for making the ground even for all the boards. Instead, the university shifted to an entire new approach that was never tested and verified. Keeping different sets and combination of papers for different courses has not only complicated the process unnecessarily but it has thrown us into a blind state wherein no one is sure of the outcome and the mess, we will have to pass through therein.