MCQs ‘unsuitable’ for Humanities: Why a parliamentary panel wants CUET UG reworked

The committee reasons that these disciplines are built around independent and subjective thinking, the kind of reasoning that a tick-the-right-box format cannot capture. The panel has asked for a review of both the quality of the CUET question papers and the overall design of the exam, so that it actually serves the goals laid out in the National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020.

Quick recall: What was CUET meant to do?

The exam was introduced in the 2022-23 academic year to ease the burden on students, universities, and the wider education system, while also levelling the playing field for candidates coming from different school boards, where marking standards can vary widely.

Before CUET, a student’s chances of getting into a central university often depended heavily on how generously their particular board had awarded marks in Class 12, which made the admission process grossly uneven. CUET was pitched as a common yardstick that every applicant, regardless of board, would be measured against.

But the committee’s report makes clear that not everyone on the panel is convinced this single yardstick works equally well for every subject.

While a multiple-choice test might be a reasonably good way to check whether a science or commerce student knows formulas and facts, the committee argues that a discipline like political science, philosophy, or literature is supposed to train and reward a student’s ability to argue, interpret, and form an original opinion, none of which a four-option question can really test.

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The panel has therefore recommended that both the question papers and the broader exam architecture be reviewed so that CUET stops working against the very subjects it is supposed to evaluate fairly.

The report also flags a second, related concern: CUET’s role as the sole entrance route for undergraduate admissions may not align with the statutory mandates of certain universities. It cites Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as an example, noting that the university’s admission system was historically designed to ensure socio-economic and regional diversity—an objective embedded in the JNU Act itself. The committee suggests that a single centralised test may not offer the flexibility required to uphold such institution-specific legislative mandates. Rather than concluding this report, the panel says it intends to deliberate further on the issue.

This is not the panel’s first word on the subject. The current document is the 381st Action Taken Report, essentially a follow-up on recommendations the committee had already made in its 364th Report on Demands for Grants for 2025-26, which dealt with the Department of Higher Education. In its response included in the same report, the government said it has “duly noted” the committee’s observations and has advised the University Grants Commission and the National Testing Agency, the two bodies responsible for running CUET, to take note as well.

The government’s response also points out that CUET now offers a single application window, letting a student apply once and sit one exam to be considered by multiple universities, and that the exam has grown rapidly, becoming the second-largest examination in the country within just two years, with 13,54,699 applicants in 2025 alone.

The government’s reply further notes that the structure of CUET for undergraduate admissions has already been simplified after lessons learned from its first three editions, and that the previous year’s session was offered in 37 subjects, down sharply from the 63 subjects on offer when the exam first launched. Results in the last session were also announced more than three weeks earlier than in 2024, which the government cites as evidence that the exam’s logistics are improving even as questions about its academic design remain unresolved.

How exactly is the CUET exam held?

CUET for undergraduate admissions is conducted by the National Testing Agency in computer-based mode and is split into three sections.

–The first is a language test, where a candidate picks one of 13 major Indian languages such as Hindi, English, Bengali, or Tamil, with additional languages also available for those who want them.

–The second is the domain-specific section, where a student chooses subjects tied to the course they hope to study, drawn from a pool that has been trimmed down to 37 subjects across science, commerce, and humanities streams; a candidate can typically pick up to five such subjects depending on what their target university asks for.

–The third is a general test that checks general knowledge, current affairs, numerical ability, logical and analytical reasoning, and general science and environmental literacy.

Every one of these papers, regardless of subject, is entirely objective in format, made up of multiple-choice questions, mostly drawn from the Class 12 NCERT syllabus, and every section carries a uniform duration of sixty minutes.

The marking scheme rewards a correct answer with five marks, costs a wrong answer with a deduction of one mark, and leaves an unattempted question untouched, with total marks for the exam now standing at 250, down from 300 in earlier editions.

This very template, the same set of multiple-choice questions and the same sixty-minute clock, applied uniformly whether a student is being tested on calculus or on political theory, is what the parliamentary committee believes needs rethinking.

However, the committee does not recommend scrapping CUET. Instead, it calls for reworking the exam’s question papers and overall design to ensure that humanities and social science students are assessed on the skills and competencies their disciplines actually require. This recommendation comes even as the government continues to expand CUET’s reach and streamline its logistics.