The UGC chairperson said the government was looking at introducing the integrated entrance exam at the earliest, preferably by next year, “we have three major entrance examinations, that is NEET, JEE (Main) and CUET and a large number of students appearing for these entrances are common. And all these examinations are conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA). Therefore, we are thinking why not use CUET scores alone for admission to multiple disciplines," according to the report.
It is important to note that CUET was launched this year for undergraduate admissions to 90 universities including 45 central universities and officials said 1.05 million students applied for CUET, making it the second biggest exam after NEET which received 1.8 million applications, the report said. While the UGC chairperson said the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also envisages “one nation, one entrance" and this will reduce students’ burden of taking multiple entrance examinations for higher education.
According to the Hindustan Times report, the UGC chairperson said, “NEET requires biology, physics and chemistry, JEE requires mathematics, physics and chemistry. All these subjects are already in CUET. Therefore, it won’t be an issue for medical and engineering colleges to use CUET scores for admission." Kumar said that the union ministry of education and UGC have started the discussions to prepare the stakeholders.
The report said that the UGC will form a committee, including experts from diverse fields, to look at the present forms of entrance exams, and the UHC chairperson said, “the committee will work on preparing recommendations for an integrated entrance exam. These recommendations will then be shared with the stakeholders for consultation and feedback and based on that the ministry and UGC will decide the modalities of the exam. A lot of planning has to be done."
(With inputs from Hindustan Times)
