The crisis of governance in higher education is becoming worse

While one national level test for admission may theoretically be desirable, an obsession with such tests ignores our diversity of standards and boards of education

- VRIENDRA

The crisis of governance has been one of the abiding features of Indian higher education for decades. Alas, in the last ten years, this crisis has become steadily worse despite the proclamations of the New Education Policy, 2020 to the contrary.

This crisis has a simple feature: a tendency to ignore or deny the root causes of a problem and take arbitrary policy decisions, affecting lakhs of students, without talking into account our resources, abilities and competence. The obsession with centralised admission to any institution of higher education in the country on the basis of marks in a single test in a multiplechoice question format is the most serious and the most visible reflection of this crisis. As of now, these tests are NEET-UG for undergraduate medical admission, NEET-PG, for post graduate medical admission, NET- UGC for PhD, for eligibility for a teaching job in a college and research fellowship, CSIRUGC for admission to PhD in science subjects and CUET for admission to undergraduate courses in all central universities.

As I write this, NEET-UG, 2024 is under investigation for paper leak, the functioning of the NTA is being investigated by the CBI and the Supreme Court is busy hearing many petitions on the issue.

The NEET-PG and CSIR-UGC tests were first postponed and have been now rescheduled, NET-UGC test was held and later cancelled on account of paper leak and CUET results have been delayed.

In other words, all examinations for admission into non-engineering courses across the country have been disrupted, affecting more than 50 lakh students.