TED NewsDesk, New Delhi: The Delhi University admissions process of 2021 will most likely have a common entrance test for admissions to undergraduate courses. Starting this upcoming session, officials at Delhi University (DU) said they are ready to adopt it immediately in combination with the class 12 score of aspirants.
The Union ministry of education constituted a seven-member committee last December to recommend modalities for the Central University Common Entrance Test (CUCET) for admission to undergraduate courses across central universities following the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. The same month, higher education secretary Amit Khare also said a common entrance test for admission to all central universities will be implemented in 2021.
DU vice-chancellor (acting) PC Joshi, who is also a member of the committee, said, “The modalities of CUCET will soon be finalized and it’s highly likely that it will be implemented from the upcoming academic session itself. DU is also ready to adopt it from this year onwards. We have already sent our proposal to the UGC (University Grants Commission) stating that we want a combination of CUCET and class 12 scores of students for admission to undergraduate courses,” he said.
Joshi said the CUCET will be conducted online and will have two components — an aptitude test and a subject-specific test. “DU won’t have a major issue in implementing CUCET. The National Testing Agency (NTA), which will conduct the test, has already been holding entrance exams for some of the undergraduate courses in DU over the past few years. Besides, we are planning to combine the CUCET score with the class 12 marks of students because we cannot make the Boards (CBSE, state board, etc) redundant. We are yet to decide the weightage of these two components,” he said.
Currently, DU only conducts entrance tests for nine courses and follows merit-based admissions for the rest of the undergraduate courses.
“We are waiting for a nod from the education ministry before making a formal announcement,” Joshi said.
Meanwhile, the members of the academic council (AC) and the executive council (EC) were not so pleased with the decisions and commented that the varsity should have consulted them before reaching such an important decision.