Time to pare down public exams

The number of public exams for admission to higher education in India appears to be increasing in a geometric progression. Students must now take JEE, NEET-UG, NEET-PG, CLAT, AILET, CUET, CAT, XAT, SNAP, NMAT, CMAT, MAT, CSIR-UGC NET, GATE, and many more to secure a seat in a programme and institution of their choice. Even this random list looks shorter than it is. JEE is not test one but two: main and advanced. The CUET is held for 37 subject combinations, while CSIR-NET is for five subjects, and UGC-NET spans 85 subjects. Add entrance tests run by different states and universities, and the list could run into hundreds.

What’s worse, appearing in one or two of these exams may seldom suffice. Hedging their bets, students apply for and take dozens within a couple of months. As only a few make it to the chosen courses at the preferred institutions, a majority keep repeating till they exhaust permissible limits. The result: Board or university exams are no longer the finish line, but merely the starting gun for a gruelling race.

The story doesn’t end there. Candidates also have to sit for scores of recruitment exams. India conducts hundreds of these annually through state public service commissions, staff selection commissions, teacher recruitment boards, and departmental agencies. In some states, the numbers are mind-boggling (for example 100 in Rajasthan and 96 in Madhya Pradesh). The UPSC and SSC are probably the only agencies that have been able to keep the number restricted to 15-20 by recruiting for multiple services through common exams.

Each exam carries a financial burden — an application fee, sometimes thousands of rupees, and costs incurred for travel, accommodation, and the near-mandatory coaching around every major test. India’s test-preparation industry is worth billions of dollars, built almost entirely on the anxiety generated by high-stakes, low-transparency entrance exams. Families in small towns often relocate a parent, or entire households, to coaching hubs like Kota, spending lakhs of rupees over one or two years just to afford their children a fighting chance.

This cost is not distributed evenly. Students from affluent and well-to-do families can afford with ease, while those from poor, marginalised, and deprived sections are forced to make painful choices. The latter miss opportunities not because they lack ability, but finances. Far from being a leveller, the proliferation of public exams has become a quiet mechanism of exclusion, rewarding financial endurance and denial of academic merit.

Beyond money, there is the matter of time and psychological strain. Preparing rigorously for a single competitive exam can take months or years. Preparing for multiple tests — each with its own syllabus emphasis, style of questions, marking scheme, and exam-day logistics — compounds that burden. Students often describe their final two years of school not as a period of learning, but as an unbroken cycle of mock tests, revision, and dread, with little room for anything resembling adolescence.

The human cost of it all has been well-documented, most visibly in reportage of the disproportionate student suicides linked to coaching hubs and exam failure. While no single reform can address deep cultural expectations around academic success in India, doing away with or at least drastically reducing the sheer number of public exams will meaningfully lower their cumulative pressure.

If students are assured of getting admission or a job on the basis of their academic records or scores obtained in one or two well-designed and rigorously held public exams, they are likely to have a better appetite for genuine learning, be more focused, and be less stressed than they now are.

As the Nandan Nilekani-led task force is set to review the Radhakrishnan Committee’s recommendations and suggest measures to reform our public examination system, it must be kept in mind that the National Testing Agency is not the only one that has failed to conduct exams fairly and credibly. Most agencies have been equally fallible, with the UPSC and SSC  probably being the only exceptions.

India needs to arrest the proliferation of exams and switch back to the time-tested model of relying on school board and university exams to assess merit for admissions and jobs. If the idea sounds too revolutionary, limit public exams and use their scores, together with past academic records, for entry into higher education programmes or multiple jobs.

Ideally, one or just a few good exams should replace many overlapping exams wherever possible. Sadly, India has fallen into the trap of conducting hordes of public exams, discipline by discipline and job by job.

The key reform should thus follow the principle that one score should open many doors. Beyond reducing the number of exams, India needs a common admissions architecture where students can register once, submit academic information, and take the appropriate national test or modules. The scores should then be made available to every participating institution to which a student applies.

Besides, no government, regulator, university, consortium, or professional body should be permitted to conduct an entrance or recruitment exam if an existing public exam can gauge the required competencies.

The answer is fewer exams, broader applicability, and better, speedier admission or recruitment decisions. The objective should not be to eliminate competition or institutional choice, but duplication. A country of India’s size, diversity, and demographic scale cannot afford to make millions of young people repeatedly prove the same competence to different institutions.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.