The Union government recently announced that all admissions to Central Universities would be decided through a Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for undergraduate courses.
This move has been allegedly made to provide a common standard of merit to evaluate students as some state boards are carefree with regard to doling out marks in Class 12. Supposedly, this has been done to level the playing field and provide an equal opportunity to all.
This move has elicited passionate debate among experts as well as the common citizens of the country. I will present the case that this is a top-down approach instead of being a bottom-up approach which will only serve to increase the existing disparities between rural and urban India and further broaden the digital divide.
I will also seek to examine the oft-misunderstood concept of merit that these entrance exams seek to test and how it is specifically designed to exclude the poor, the downtrodden and the socially marginalised.
Improving Standards At The Basic Level
Creating new testing agencies and announcing new entrance examinations do not do anything to improve the standard of education in our country.
It can be argued that demanding certain standards from the students without improving the quality of education imparted to them is actually undemocratic.

Education needs to be improved at the school level, from primary onwards and that is the only way in which standards can be improved. Instead of focusing on primary and secondary education, governments through the years have paid attention only to higher education, colleges, universities, etc.
This is the top-down approach that has been followed since independence. Multiple governments with different leaders have come and gone, but the approach toward education has remained the same.
Reforms in the education sector have solely focused on higher education or building new colleges and universities rather than school education. It is highly unfair to demand a certain standard from a student through entrance exams when they have not been afforded the opportunity to get a quality education.
The poor standard of education and evaluation in schools is indeed a major problem. Instead of addressing this, the government has decided to impose another burden on the student by announcing these mandatory entrance exams.
The root cause of the poor state of our education system is the school system. Governments through the years have sought to treat the symptoms instead of the root cause. It is perfectly fair to have high standards of entry for medical and other prestigious courses but enabling conditions should be provided to each student of India in order to give everyone a fair opportunity.
We don’t have a single school board throughout India. There are various school boards with varying evaluation methods, merit and exams, and yet we have a single entrance test for admission into colleges.
Thus, students are pushed into joining private coaching centres to clear entrance examinations.
Coaching Centres An Indictment On Our Schooling System
The rat race to succeed in various entrance exams like JEE, NEET, etc., have led to the rapid rise of coaching institutions in the past decade. This is a damning indictment of the schooling system prevalent in India.
Both parents and students alike feel that schools don’t provide enough to make sure that a student can pass the entrance exams. The competition is extremely high as the exams are of a high standard and the seats are limited.
Private coaching centres are prime profit-making ventures which feed on the fear and anxiety of students. These centres had multiplied manifold during the pandemic when schools were mostly shut.
The coaching industry alone contributes $3.5 billion to the $117 billion share of the education sector.
Who gets access to these coaching institutes? Only the elite and the privileged have the resources to pay the massive fees charged by these institutions. The same is going to happen with CUET. The elites will gain a massive advantage while the underprivileged will find it extremely hard to gain entry into colleges, and hence, they will be forced to drop their studies and engage in menial jobs.
The Elitist Concept Of Merit
People from underprivileged backgrounds often have to undergo the test of merit to prove themselves. Merit is equated to scoring high marks in entrance tests and reservation of seats is said to bring down merit and reward mediocrity. Nothing can be farther from the truth than this.
This conception of merit is highly elitist and deliberately seeks to exclude the socially marginalised groups who have been denied access to education for thousands of years while reservation has only been in place for 70 odd years. A separate essay can be written on reservation, but that’s not the focus of this article.
But it does have some important implications for CUET and related exams. Urban, elite, upper caste, financially secure students receive a higher level of education in schools and a higher level of specific training in coaching institutes. Meanwhile, rural, poor, lower-caste students receive poor quality education and are denied access to coaching institutes.
Yet, both these categories of students are expected to undergo one entrance test through which their merit is decided. How is this fair or logical?
A uniform standard of merit cannot be applied as long as equality of opportunity regarding access to quality education is not provided uniformly to students coming from all sections of society.
This would automatically mean that the elite would continue to receive a quality education while the rest get left behind.
The divide between haves and have-nots will only increase due to this system of entrance tests for admission into colleges. These tests ensure that only the elites and a lucky few non-elites gain access to quality higher education. Such a divide is unhealthy for social cohesion in a diverse country like India.
The plight of students has not been considered at all while making such important decisions as they have to undertake exam after exam frequently. Also, it will double the burden on underprivileged students who receive low-quality education and face extraordinary pressure to make it in their lives somehow.
Instead of this top-down model of enforcing a standard of merit through entrance examinations, a bottom-up model of improving the basic level of education at the school level throughout the country must be undertaken. This would ensure that all students would be at a place where their merit can be tested fairly at the college level.