CUET Update: The Joint Entrance Examination- Main (JEE-Main) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) might become a thing of the past, as the University Grants Commission is working on a proposal to merge the engineering and medical entrances into the Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate (CUET-UG). In a recent media interview, UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said that the higher education regulator is working out a committee to deliberate with different stakeholders to reach a consensus on the proposal that is aimed at at reducing stress and logistics for students.
As per the proposal, instead of appearing for the four subjects — mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology — in three entrance exams, students can take the exam once and be eligible for and explore different fields of study, Kumar said while talking to Times Of India.
UGC launched CUET this year bringing entrance exams of most universities under one umbrella. In its debut year, the entrance exam received over 1 million applications.
“The proposal is, can we integrate all these entrance examinations so that our students are not subjected to multiple entrance examinations based on the same knowledge base? The students should have one single entrance examination, but multiple opportunities to apply among the disciplines,” said Kumar.
JEE Main, NEET and now CUET-UG make up the three major entrance exams in the country, taken by close to 43 lakh aspirants.
As per the media daily’s report, by and large, a majority of the students appear for at least two of these exams, if not all. Candidates appear for physics, chemistry and mathematics for JEE (Mains) while in NEET-UG, biology replaces mathematics. These subjects are also part of the CUET-UG’s 61 domain subjects.
“Students who would like to go into engineering their marks in mathematics, physics, chemistry can be used as a ranking list and similarly for medicine. If they don’t get into medicine or engineering, under CUET they will still have the opportunity to join different programmes using the same marks of either mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and so on. So therefore, by writing once, in these four subjects, students can try for different opportunities.,” Kumar said.
This, however, will make the exam high-stake hence, students will get two chances in a year at the exam, he added.
On bringing the pen-paper NEET-UG under its fold, Kumar said: “The future is computer-based multi choice question-type tests because OMR-based tests still have some challenges in terms of the accuracy of the evaluation.”
For breaking news and live news updates, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Read more on Latest Exams & Results News on India.com.
