The Hindu Business Line : After CET, the deluge?

IN THE context of the assault mounted on the Common Entrance Test (CET) from all quarters in Tamil Nadu, its scrapping should cause no surprise. The arguments against it are theoretically unassailable. It is certainly wrong to subject young students, just out of the ordeal of Plus Two examinations, to yet another torment in the form of CET as a condition of admission to professional courses. There is undoubtedly merit in the contention that the Plus Two marks should be regarded as a good enough basis for judging the applicants' suitability.

However, this is predicated on the fundamental assumption that the Plus Two marks provide a sure-fire benchmark of academic performance and the quality of education. The prevalent feeling among dispassionate observers is that the decline in standards in respect of both teaching and valuation has made the Plus Two results an unreliable indicator of the students' potential, and that was why the CET system had to be introduced. At least one Vice-Chancellor of a professional university in Tamil Nadutold me that even among those admitted based on the results of CET, many with peak marks in Plus Two struggled in the first year even to get 30 or 40 per cent and needed intense coaching to be brought to the desired level.

It should be remembered that the CET also served the purpose of levelling the playing field for Plus Two and CBSE students. Because of the stricter norms of valuation by CBSE, the marks scored by its students were not comparable with those secured by Plus Two students, and the CET helped equalise the handicaps and advantages of both categories of students.

If this analysis accurately reflects the educational scene in Tamil Nadu, then the abolition of CET needs to be followed by sincere and vigorous efforts by the State Government and educationists to safeguard the interests of the future generation and the credibility of the professional courses themselves by prescribing and enforcing the strictest criteria in the matter of syllabus, curriculum, teaching methods and quality, setting of questions and valuation of answer papers.

Only then will it be possible to restore to the State the high reputation that it enjoyed as a beacon for others until recently.

B. S. Raghavan

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