Government’s Common Admission Test to rope in 15 central universities from next year

• The Human Resource and Development Ministry (MHRD) is likely to give a nod to a proposal of having a Common Admission Test from the next academic session.
  
• The test will be conducted for over 300 undergraduate, postgraduate courses and Ph.D. programmes.
  
• The test, which will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) will rope in 15 central universities across Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka among others.
  
• As of now, 10 central universities accept the scores of CUCET examination.

The Human Resource and Development Ministry (MHRD) is likely to nod to a proposal to have one Common Admission Test from the next academic session. The test is likely to take place in May next year.

The test, which will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) plans to rope in 15 central universities across Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka among others.

The test will be conducted for over 300 undergraduate, postgraduate courses and Ph.D. programmes.

Earlier, the Central University Common Entrance Test (CUCET) was conducted by the University of Rajasthan every year. And 10 central universities accepted the scores of CUCET examination. It is a national level examination for admission to B.Tech, B.Sc, Integrated B.Sc, M.Sc, M.A courses.

“NTA has the capacity and capability as the final aim is to make it a premium testing agency. It has already delivered glitch free, transparent and secure testing for a number of critical entrance exams such Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Main), National Eligibility cum Eligibility Test (NEET), National Eligibility Test (NET) by UGC, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) entrance tests,” an official from MHRD told The Times of India.

NTA is planning to get more centrally-funded universities into its ambit for the Common Admission Test.

To address the loopholes in the education process, the government is also planning to introduce a common entrance examination for undergraduate admissions instead of different exams for each university. This is if a proposal by the draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019, goes through.

See also:
India may have one common exam for all college admissions-- if the draft National Education Policy is passed

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