What Experts Say

‘Imposition of CUET on state universities an attack on academic autonomy’

‘Thoughtlessness & lack of coordination between officers sitting in AC cabins’

‘Need to bring uniformity to the education system, before entrance examinations’

‘CUET is only widening the financial and educational barriers it claimed to smash’

 

JAMMU: While introducing the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) last year, the University Grant Commission had hailed the move as the greatest education reform of the country, which would bring uniformity to admission procedures, and smash the barriers of inequality—both educational and financial.

A year later, all these claims have been exposed, all the fancy jargon broken into smithereens as young boys and girls from Jammu and Kashmir are out on the roads protesting against the Test, and the examination conducting agency, National Testing Authority, which allotted these students examination centres outside the union territory, in a utter disregard to their preferred choices for taking up Test in Jammu and Kashmir.

“As a student who has studied in Jammu till 12th class and now wants to take up admission in a Jammu college, why do I have to take an exam 500 kilometers away in Punjab,” asks an enraged student.

In doing so, the Common University Entrance Test has given birth to the very same problem, it claimed to fix, or as the Babus sitting in their lavish AC cabins had thought. Smashing the financial barriers.

UGC Chairperson Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar had said that the CUET would reduce financial stress on students as they will not have to sit for multiple entrance exams and will make it easier particularly for students from marginalised backgrounds.

In only one year, we have seen a sea of coaching institutes that have come up to train students for this entrance exam, in turn putting more financial burden on students and their families.

“They said that it (CUET) would save us money applying for only one exam. Now, to take up this exam, I have to go to Amritsar along with my parents. The cost of three persons for travel, lodging and for food would far exceed the money I would have spent applying for multiple examinations,” said a female student from Srinagar.

In 2022, around 41 central universities had participated in the CUET. None of the other universities from Jammu and Kashmir had participated. However, this year, both Jammu University, and Kashmir University, both the centre universities, both cluster universities, along with a number of colleges of the union territory are among more than 200 institutions participating in the Test.

The fumed students, who knocked the doors of administration in Jammu University and Kashmir University, were told that the varsities had no say in the matters of CUET.

“I am applying for a normal course– not a professional course like medical or engineering—in one of the colleges of Jammu under the cluster university here. Why do I have to undergo such ordeal for that,” a visibly agitated student told The Earth News.

Educationists and experts also concur.

“Education is a state-subject. Different states have different education systems. The students are taught from class 1 till class 12 according to that particular system and its particular requirements. One day, the UGC comes up with CUET and tells them nothing of what they learnt all their lives would matter and only their performance in CUET would matter. This is an attack on academic autonomy,” said a noted educationist.

“The mismanaged show that the CUET has become in only one year of its existence is a result of thoughtlessness and lack of coordination between the officers sitting in New Delhi and those in the respective states. The UGC imposed CUET on Jammu and Kashmir, and our educational department could not think of the possible issues that could arise of it, let alone protest it,” said another expert.

This is another stress test added to the burden of the young students. The union government wants to do this as part of its NEP. But it should fix the root—bringing uniformity to the education system in schools across states, before bringing uniformity to the entrance examination, another expert noted.