The Academic Council of Delhi University on Friday passed a proposal to hold a common entrance test (CET) for undergraduate admissions to the university.
The proposal was based on a report submitted by a nine-member committee constituted by Vice Chancellor Yogesh Singh after the university dealt with the problem of “over” and “under” intake in the recent admission season due to the cut-off system.
In a dissent note, 16 members of the Academic Council pressed on the administration not to change the tried and tested admission procedure of the university in a rushed manner.
The committee report, after analysing the data of admissions done under the current cut-off system, said that “as long as undergraduate admissions in the university are cut-off based, there is no way that fluctuations, sometimes significant, can be avoided to maintain equity”.
The committee suggested that the university conduct a central admission test through a well-devised internal arrangement or through any external agency so that it may impart “substantial objectivity” to the process of admission. It added that the test could be followed by declaration of a list of eligible candidates for admission under various courses of study spanning across all the colleges and departments of the university where undergraduate courses are run.
The dissenting members said that the report proposing CET has based its findings only on the academic season 2021-22, which took place during the pandemic period. Any change in the process that has successfully churned out generations of meritorious students can only be justified after considering data analysis for a substantial period of time, they submitted.
The members added that the report was silent on the total expenditure by the university on conducting such an examination, its mode and format, number of centres required as well as how students who want to shift streams would be assessed by a central examination.
Question over ‘merit’
Criticising the report that mentions “merit and only merit of a prospective applicant… will be the benchmark of undergraduate admissions”, the members in their dissent note said, “Does this mean that students who were admitted are not meritorious? Does this mean that the report is alleging that the admission system that the university has been following since many generations was not based on merit?”
“CET for undergraduate admissions will lead to mushrooming of coaching institutes that will be particularly bad for socially and economically disadvantaged students and girl students,” said Mithuraaj Dhusiya, an Academic Council member who was among the signatories to the dissent note.
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