Govt tells public varsities to join common entrance test

Some universities have expressed their reluctance to the test. On Thursday, Vaghani chaired a meeting of vice-chancellors of state public universities to evaluate the feasibility and preparedness by them for the examination at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University (BAOU) Ahmedabad.

“There is a need to evaluate the pros and cons of it. Also, the preparations done on the part of universities for the implementation of CUET as listed by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 need to be assessed. As Gujarat is one of the states that have implemented the NEP 2020 to the maximum, preparations for this also is under way,” Vaghani told The Indian Express.

Barring the state’s public technical universities such as the Gujarat Technological University (GTU) and institute of Infrastructure Research and Management (IITRAM), Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University (BAOU) and sectorial state universities such as Children’s University and Indian Institute of Teacher Education or Shree Somnath Sanskrit University, this shall apply to the nearly 10 state public universities.

The public univresities include the Gujarat University, Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University, Sardar Patel University, Saurashtra University, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and the Veer Narmad South Gujarat University.

The Thursday’s meeting came as a follow-up of a virtual meeting held on April 4 chaired by University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman Prof M Jagadesh Kumar of all vice-chancellors where they were “encouraged” to join CUET and use CUET score instead of using marks obtained in Class 12 board or score of any other entrance test for admissions to BA, BSc, and BCom and other similar non-technical programmes.

However, sources privy to the development revealed that there is a resistance from state universities to conduct admissions on the basis of CUET score. “There are issues such as difficulty faced by students in rural and interior areas to sit for the computer based test (CBT), additional financial burden of CUET exam fee to be paid by students, promoting coaching centres and how to derive a common admission formula in case both-CUET and Class 12 board exams,” a government source said.

The UGC, in its communication to the state government, has “requested” to take possible steps “at the state government level” to adopt CUET score for admission to undergraduate programmes from the academic session 2022-’23 in the state public universities.

The CUET is said to have “encouraged” state universities to adopt CUET score in order to “save students from appearing in multiple entrance examinations conducted on different dates, sometimes coinciding with each other and also to provide equal opportunity to all students”.

UGC has also made it clear that adopting CUET will not affect the reservation and admission policy of the universities.