One nation-one examination has been a long pending demand of the
student fraternity as the over 90 medical admission tests made the lives of Plus Two students miserable for years. The multiple tests also saw malpractices galore, but now the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET), made mandatory from this year onwards for medical courses, is expected to resolve all such problems. Students from rural areas and small towns, however, have their own fears about appearing for it as they believe they may not be competing on a level playing ground with others studying a better syllabus in bigger cities. Team DC examines the various aspects of the coming test to set the minds of students at large at rest.
Point by point
1. From 11 tests to one
Going by the latest data of the Medical Council of India, Karnataka has the largest number of medical Under Graduate and Post Graduate seats. While 7,345 MBBS seats have already been approved by the MCI in 49 medical colleges of the state, another 500 are expected to be added to them by the start of admissions, leaving it with around 7,945 in all.
But till the Supreme Court made NEET mandatory , getting admission to a medical college in the state was not easy task with over 11 admission tests giving students a hard time . Besides the Karnataka CET for admission to a government medical college, COMED-K held its own test for private medical colleges and another test was conducted by the association of minority medical colleges. All the private universities, including Manipal, KLE, JSS, Devaraj Urs, St. John's, Nitte, and Yenepoya too had their own admission tests. Attending the AIPMT was mandatory to secure seats through the 15 per cent All India Quota in government medical colleges. But now finally they have just one examination, NEET, to write to secure a seat in any medical college of the state irrespective of its management.
2. No more college-agent nexus, no more impersonation
Admission tests conducted by few of the private universities and COMED-were often plagued by malpractices. Only last year tens of agents and students were arrested for alleged impersonation during the COMED-K UGET. An investigation carried out by the CID proved that colleges were hand in glove with the agents and students were used to block merit quota seat during counseling and seat allotment.The CBSE, which has been given the task of holding NEET this year, says its score card and registration number are now all important for seat allotment this year.
Read: Guest column: NEET-II on July 24 – What you should know
Thankfully, with the score card being valid only for a year, a student cannot use it to gain admissions in multiple colleges, effectively putting an end to students securing admissions in many colleges and then surrendering their seats at the las minute in an attempt to block seats.With the NEET score card being mandatory for the management quota as well, colleges too will not be able to allot their seats on first come first serve basis, but will have to fill all their seat based only on merit.
3. End of political interference in syllabus
Political/ government interference in the drafting of school and college syllabus is a common complaint. In fact, in Karnataka a committee has been working on modifying their syllabus over the last three years following allegations of its saffronisation by the last BJP government. But with the country now moving to a one- test regime, state governments have been left with no option but to follow the NCERT syllabus from class I onwards, ending their interference in framing it.
It's however feared that state students could have a problem with NEET because of the poor syllabus they presently follow. Prof. KS Acharya, an academician, points out that the state government may have upgraded the classes XI and XII syllabus to CBSE/ICSE standards, but the syllabus of classes I to X remain as inferior as ever. "When CBSE/ ICSE schools are using digital technology to improve the learning of students, the state is still using old techniques like Nali Kali to achieve this. The SC judgment on NEET should now teach the government to stop interfering and immediately introduce the NCERT syllabus right from class I," he stressed.
4. Tough Challenge for CBSE
But it may not be all smooth sailing even with NEET, fear students and officials of the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) and the higher education department, who point out that conducting the test across the state will be a huge challenge for the CBSE.
"Now every medical seat aspirant will apply for NEET and the onus is on the board to hold the examination even in remote centres, where it has never held such tests before. In Karnataka only 16,000 students had appeared for the AIPMT (NEET phase 1), but over a lakh will appear for NEET phase 2. It will be interesting to see how CBSE manages to hold the test for this huge number of students," said a KEA officer. While an officer from the CBSE agreed that it did not have experience in holding such examinations in remote areas, he , however, said it was upto the challenge.
5. Will grievances be redressed?
Parents and students , who have appeared for various examinations conducted by the CBSE, complain that it has no history of responding to grievances of students on time. “We cannot even meet the officials and lodge a complaint unlike in the KEA , which has its branches across the state and sorts out issues locally. The CBSE does not have such facilitation centres unfortunately. We want the CBSE to look into all these minutes issues before going ahead with NEET,” said Ms Veena Shridhar, mother of a student aspiring to do a medical course .
