The first edition of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET)-UG, the newly introduced common admission test for undergraduate admissions in all central universities, began on July 15. With 14.9 lakh candidates having registered for it, the CUET is now the second biggest entrance exam in the country, surpassing Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Main's average registration of nine lakh candidates, and being right behind the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)-UG, which has an average of 18 lakh registrations. While the Class 12 board exam results were the main criteria for admission to undergraduate courses so far, this year onwards, admissions to 45 central universities will happen based on the CUET score.
Introduced in accordance with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, CUET is based on the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) curriculum, which is prescribed in schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). Since the test was made mandatory for all central universities in March 2022, educationists have raised concerns over the disadvantage to students from state boards, the centralisation of education, and how expensive private coaching institutes offer an edge to those who can afford them.
So far, 12 state universities, 11 deemed universities, and 19 private universities have applied to participate in CUET. With this, admissions to 90 universities across India are happening through CUET this year. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has been urging state universities, private universities, and deemed-to-be universities to switch to CUET scores, seemingly with the aim of bringing all universities under its ambit.
Prince Gajendra Babu, an educationist based in Tamil Nadu, says CUET violates the constitutional rights of states, and is against federalism. “In a country like India, where you have several states with diverse cultural characteristics, the learning process is also influenced by those individual cultures. We cannot judge learning with a single benchmark like CUET. Regulation of universities, admission procedures, fees etc should come under the states’ aegis. State universities should be able to decide what qualifications candidates need to be able to study a particular course,” he says.
The pattern of the paper could also put significant pressure on students, and compel them to take up subjects that do not have relevance to them, Prince says. For instance, sections 1A and 1B of CUET, which test language efficiency, require students to choose up to three languages across the two sections (out of 13 languages for 1A, and out of 20 for 1B). In this context, Prince questions why it should be required for a student who, say, wants to study Tamil literature in college, to also know other languages like Sanskrit or French. “Why should passing an exam in that other language be mandatory for admission to a course in Tamil literature?” Prince argues. “The only thing these requirements will do is deny opportunities and fundamental rights to Indians, especially from the working class. It will not ensure merit,” he says.
Soon after the CUET was announced, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to scrap the test. He said that CUET, like NEET, would sideline the diverse school education systems across India, adding that any entrance test based on NCERT syllabus will not provide an equal opportunity to students studying state board syllabi. He also noted that in most states, state board syllabus students constitute more than 80% of the total student population, of whom most are from marginalised sections.
Drawing parallels with NEET, Vasanthi Devi says tests like CUET would also lead to mushrooming of coaching institutes only accessible to a few elite groups, going against the interest of the majority of students who belong to marginalised groups. Prince also quotes Dr BR Ambedkar, who had argued at a Bombay Legislative Council debate in 1927 that raising the standard of examinations does not really translate into increase in merit. In Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings & Speeches, Vol 20, he is documented to have said: “[...] certain educationists in India … believe that the raising of the standard of examination is equivalent to the raising of the standard of education. Examination is something quite different from education, but in the name of raising the standard of education, they are making the examinations so impossible and so severe that the backward communities which have hitherto not had the chance of entering the portals of the University are absolutely kept out.”
Objecting to a scenario in which all Class 12 students across India would be studying the same NCERT syllabus in order to qualify in CUET, former Vice-Chancellor of Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tamil Nadu Vasanthi Devi, who is vocal against the imposition of NEP 2020 on states that while NEP 2020 talks about global standards, steps like CUET are a deviation from what we see in most top performing countries in education rankings, including the US and countries in Europe. These do not follow a centralised, uniform syllabus. “In some of these countries, even at the county and school levels, the syllabus can be altered to an extent with the intervention of parents and the locally elected government. There are tests like SAT, ACT etc in the United States, but even they are only needed to some extent. If a university doesn't want to look at SATs, it can still go by the student’s performance at school in academics, sports etc. They conform to a very broad national pattern, but otherwise there is total freedom. Without that, you kill the spirit of education, and so any step towards centralising education cannot be accepted,” she says.
Vasanthi Devi says education must be rooted in the soil of each region. “States like Tamil Nadu and Kerala have had a very different historical trajectory compared to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. A uniform curriculum across states cannot be accepted,” she says.
Several education activists have argued that the CUET is just the latest in a series of steps towards the centralisation of education, which began with the 42nd amendment to the Constitution in 1976 during the Emergency, moving education from the State List in the Seventh Schedule to the Concurrent List. When a subject is in the State List, state governments have exclusive powers to make laws and policies about it. Both Union and state governments hold power to frame policies on Concurrent List subjects.
RS Raveendhren, a Madras High Court advocate, traced the history of the centralisation of education when the NEP 2020 came out. In his article, Raveendhren talked about how the first NEP which came out in 1986 was aimed at using education as a tool for “national integration”, and that NEP 2020, which has the same idea behind it, conflicts with federalism and does not guarantee secular education.
Anurag Mehra, who teaches engineering and policy at IIT-Bombay, also concurs that exams like CUET pose problems for the states' autonomy. “The ideal situation is for states to have a syllabus that draws from a national curriculum, while also keeping space for locally relevant topics. If overdone in any direction, it will cause problems. If states want students to avail of opportunities in central institutions, then students should be exposed to some set of universal topics. But if states stick to syllabi that do not share enough topics with a national curriculum, their students will be at a disadvantage. On the other hand, if the Union government forces a syllabus that excludes locally relevant topics, it is unfair to students because it deprives them of being educated about things that are important for them from a social, cultural and even economic perspective.”
There have been repeated demands, especially from education activists in Tamil Nadu, to move education back to the State List. P Wilson, DMK MP in the Rajya Sabha and an advocate, has moved a Private Member’s Bill in the Parliament to remove education from the Concurrent List, and instead, include it in both the State List and Union List simultaneously. In an earlier interview with TNM, Wilson had explained why a uniform policy in education would do more harm than good.
“The philosophy of ‘one education policy’ is inappropriate in the field of education. In education, the outlook should be inclusive and broad, not exclusive and narrow. Even if laws are now enacted by the state legislature pertaining to school education, they can be modified by Union laws if the Parliament wishes to legislate laws on the subject. In case the state legislation contradicts Union legislation, assent of the President can be withheld on the advice of the Union government. Thus, effectively, the Union government can take control over schools established, funded and run by states. This would spell disaster for diversity. Only the states can ensure that education reaches the grass root level. Welfare schemes for a state-specific community/caste can be brought and implemented only by the state,” he had said in the interview. He also called the idea of having a uniform syllabus across the country and a single board “the brainchild of the right-wing”, aimed at creating a homogenous nation in place of our diverse, multicultural society.
Some of the effects of centralised education policies as forewarned by educationists are visible today – be it controversies over ‘saffronising’ syllabi in schools, or the inaccessibility of NEET and subsequent student suicides. Like Wilson, Prince also says the present national higher education framework seeks to demolish the present concept of India which is rooted in unity and linguistic diversity. “They want to move from this to a monocultural state – which is why there is a shift from speaking of Sanskrit as a language to Sanskrit as a culture,” he says.