NEET needs a total makeover
Stop-gap measures won’t help to regain public trust in the discredited medical entrance exam
The controversy over the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) refuses to die down even as more worms continue to crawl out of the woodwork. The deferment of the counselling session, expected to start on July 6 (“never officially notified” is not an excuse in this case, unfortunately) is the latest shock to the system. The limited issue of the validity of this year’s test (given concerns that the paper may have been leaked), and the way it was conducted, is before the apex court, but it is important to acknowledge the three fundamental issues with the test that explain why the noise around it refuses to die down.
The first is the concept itself. Medical education is not like any other education — imagine if the functioning of the lower courts was dependent on attached law colleges. All medical colleges, government and private, are attached to hospitals, and some southern states, especially Tamil Nadu, have invested significant resources in building their health infrastructure at the district level — considered by some to be the most crucial — by setting up medical colleges-plus-hospitals. Given the almost prohibitively high cost of medical education in private colleges, much of the competition in NEET is for seats in government colleges, and states such as Tamil Nadu naturally believe they have received a raw deal with admissions being routed through a national exam.
The second is the agency mandated to conduct the test, the National Testing Agency (NTA). The IITs run the Joint Entrance Exam, taken by around 1.5 million students last year, and do a good job of it. The IIMs run CAT, taken by around 300,000 students last year, and once again do a good job of it. NTA, if its track record is any indication (NEET UG isn’t the only test it administers that has become controversial), is still on a learning curve.
The third is the process itself — from the paper itself being leaked, to proxy candidates appearing, to organised cheating, there are far too many vulnerabilities in the process. A completely online test will remove many of them, but this should not come at the cost of making the test inaccessible to poor students, or students from rural areas.
A complete rethink may be what is needed — even if it means delaying the current academic session by a few months.
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