The Rot in India’s Higher Education System
Ayesha Kidwai | 1 July 2024 | The Hindu
The academic year of 2022-23 was marked by unprecedented delays in admissions to all university programmes because of the introduction of the National Testing Agency (NTA)-run Common University Entrance Test (CUET) regime for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Initially, a CUET for PhD admissions had also been envisaged by the NTA for 2022-23, but that plan was summarily dropped in mid-September 2022. University administrations that had disregarded the serious internal critique by teachers and students of the blind ceding of this core aspect of university autonomy were left in the lurch.
One such university was Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) whose tryst with the NTA is indicative of all that Central universities have suffered in this NTA regime. JNU, India’s second-ranked university that produces an average of 650 PhDs a year, had conducted its own all-India pen and paper entrance examination (for all its programmes of study) for nearly 50 years before 2017, which never had to be cancelled because of the use of unfair means or paper leaks, and which ensured the completion of all admissions by August 14, year upon year. There were widespread demands within the university for a return to the JNU entrance exam tradition for all levels of enrolment, given the presence of capacity, experience, and expertise in the university. In some public posturing, the Vice Chancellor critiqued the NTA’s multiple choice question format. Yet, the exam was not brought back home to JNU and remained in the format imposed by the NTA…