The Quality Issue

Low cutoffs for medical, engineering qualifying exams don't solve any of the education problems

In a worrying trend, both NEET and JEE-Advanced examinations, which channel admission into India's medical colleges and IITS respectively, have recorded record low cutoff scores. A general category candidate with just 55 marks out of 360 is eligible for an IIT seat this year, even as the cutoff score to qualify for getting admission in a medical college corresponds to the 50th percentile for the open category. These low scores have helped 9.9 lakh to qualify for 92,000 medical seats and 40,712 for 16,000 IIT seats-but not without raising questions about the quality of the candidates.