CUET for Standard Uniformity in Higher Education

Prof D Mukhopadhyay
India is known to be the third largest education system across the globe in terms of quantity. Poor quality education is the leading factor to poor learning outcomes. The current UGC Chairman is an ardent educationist par excellence in terms of quality research, education governance, policy formulation and social transformation reflected in his ‘do it now ‘ approach and introduction of Central Universities Entrance Test(CUET) policy for bringing about standardization and uniformity in benchmark is an evidence . UGC announced introduction of the CUET as mandatory for undergraduate admission at any of Central Universities. Total Number of Degree awarding Universities as on 4th March, 2022, as per UGC, is 1,053 which consist of 54 Central Universities, 444 State Universities, 126 Deemed to be Universities within the meaning of the Section 3 of the UGC Act 1956, 403 Private Universities and 126 Institutions of National Importance. Besides, IITs, IIMs, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICAI), the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), Science Education and Research Institutes/ Universities, Indian Institute of Science (II Sc.) etc are primarily engaged in providing tertiary and professional level higher education and research in pan India. Further, there are about 45,000 Undergraduate and Postgraduate (Autonomous) Degree awarding Institutions/Colleges on date. As per Census 2011, Male and Female Literacy Rates were about 84 % and 65% respectively. Gross Enrolment Ratio is about 26% (subject to pandemic adjustment) is quite depressing compared to that of the USA, Japan, Australia, European Union, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, China etc. Indian Universities produce employable graduates and skilled workforce approximately 5 per cent by and large being dismally low compared to China-47%, Japan-80%, Germany-74 per cent, South Korea-96 per cent, USA- 93%, UK-75% and France-78%.
Employability’s the capability of individuals in effectively utilizing their knowledge, skills, expertise and attitudes within a given context to self- sufficiently realize their potential by sustaining their own employment. In simplicity, skills include reading, basic mathematical calculation, problem solving, decision-making, positive attitude, cooperativeness, team performance, critical thinking etc. Skill is a central source of high productivity and economic well-being. It is important to mention that the learning outcomes of the educational program at higher and tertiary levels are the most significant aspects of higher education from the perspective of the students’ careers. Alverno College’s pioneering work on integrating curriculum and assessment is a notable exception. Learning outcomes of whole-degree programs are usually expressed as a set attributes including those relating to generic communication, critical thinking and interpersonal skills as well as discipline-specific knowledge and expertise. However, there is a considerable gulf between the rhetoric and reality in terms of ensuring that the graduate attributes are developed and assessed and this aspect is observed to have been missing almost since inception of adoption of the First National Policy on Education, 1968. In addition to teaching models per se, the university level education curricula have been suffering from not to having characteristics such as depth and breadth, integration, inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary features of teaching-learning and research components. It is a serious concern witnessing lack of integration across undergraduate programs that created a void for capstone courses where students have hardly an opportunity to integrate and apply knowledge gained over previous years of study. Employability, the desired outcome, of pursuing a well structured, balanced curricula and time-honoured pedagogy are supposed to support cultivation of knowledge, skill development and attitudes which are sine qua non for securing employment and the same has been proved to be powerful models for teaching and curricula design. It may be mentioned that ‘Learning, Curriculum and Employability In Higher Education’ a pioneering authorship work by Peter Knight and Mantz Yorkelists contains total of 39 types of skills that show a a significant and meaningful direction as to how an undergraduate curricula should focus on employability of the learners. As per the ASER 2016, for the first time in a decade, reading and arithmetic scores was observed to have improved in public funded schools at early grades. States such as Chhattisgarh (UT), Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Telangana and Uttarakhand’s reading level is raised by 7 per cent at grade 3 level since 2014. This indicates that improvement in learning is quite possible but it needs time. Nevertheless, according to ASER 2018, in grade 5 after more than four years of schooling, only about half of children could read a grade 2 level text fluently. The National Achievement Survey 2017, conducted for grades 3, 5 and 8, exhibits that only 45.2 per cent of students achieving the targeted performance levels across all subjects and classes at the national level. Successful performance in school is supported by a wide range of abilities and attitudes.
Socioeconomic competencies, beyond traditional literacy and numeracy skills and life management along with humanistic skills significantly contribute to the aspects of quality education and learning. While there is an understanding about importance of life and self management skills and attributes , there is a possible absence of alignment between traditional curricula and a life management skills delivery and learning agenda along with lack of understanding how these could be developed across education continuum. In this regard, the NEP-2020 is expected to effectively focus on stressing importance of leaning by doing and CUET is possibly a path breathtaking approach to raising higher education standard and uniformity in benchmark. It seems to be worth mentioning that curricula design, development, implementation holding examination and evaluation standard of CA, CMA , CS , ITTs, IIMs are skill based and professional competency level is almost the same across and it is perhaps rare to witness that students graduating these programs are unemployable due to lack of professional skill, expertise , depth of professional competence, cognitive, interpersonal, time management, target setting and target aching skills and attributes. This so happens because of uniform standard, benchmark, time-honoured curricula designing and development and offering technology based training and development. The important attributes of these institutions are that course curricula, training and professional development schemes are revised every five year and a comparative matrix is designed to make gap analysis against the international and technologically developed countries’ standard and benchmarks. Therefore, India need not seek assistance from anywhere other than within herself for devising a reasoning, cognitive and humanistic approach based curricula and uniformity in teaching-learning, training and development and producing overall professionally competent workforce for the country. CUET seems to be set in right direction and the same approach should gradually be adopted in state and private universities and other institutions of higher learning. Our existing education format and system ends in achieving the answers to ‘Who and what’ and education is incomplete unless it is robust enough to enlighten and empower the students with force of capability in finding out the answers to ‘Why and How’.
However, the decision makers and strategy formulators should consider that a castle cannot stand on weak foundation and therefore it is an imperative to take into consideration the factors-equities in access and learning, empowering teachers and staff serving behind the curtains for delivery of inclusive quality education, learning, capacity development and bringing about reform simultaneously in primary, secondary, higher secondary curricula and teaching-learning system which is foundation-building-education during cognitive faculty development phase of the students. Therefore, steps adopted by UGC under NEP-2020 for introducing CUET seems to be a right direction. However, the central and the respective State Governments should prioritize strengthening foundational curricula for development of cognitive and humanistic faculties of school going children.
(The author is an Independent Researcher and Practising Educationist)