NTA, which was announced in this year's Budget by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, is supposed to be formalised by July this year.
The race for high cut-off marks for admissions to undergraduate courses might soon be over as the Centre is working on a common entrance examination for around 800 universities in the country.
While universities such as Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banaras Hindu University and Jamia Milia Islamia admit students on the basis of entrance tests, most others — including Delhi University — rely on Class XII marks, which makes most boards "inflate" marks.
There was not much clarity on how a common entrance test will ensure a level-playing field among different boards which have different syllabi, particularly for humanities. HRD sources, however, said that the government was looking at a pan-India syllabus to push its idea of one common test.
The proposed test on the lines of other competitive examinations for medical, engineering and other professional courses will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), the government's premier agency for conducting all kinds of competitive examinations.
NTA, which was announced in this year's Budget by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, is supposed to be formalised by July this year.
According to sources in the HRD Ministry, plans of having an entrance test for all universities are being developed because of high cut-off marks needed for admissions to DU and other universities. DU gets close to three lakh applications from students across the country each year and declares cut-offs as high as 98 per cent and even 100 per cent for some subjects.
"The universities say that boards inflate marks, boards say that universities declare high cut-offs, so they have to do the moderation," said a source in the HRD Ministry.
"After a long debate we have realised that marks are being inflated to as much as 10 per cent by boards and a disparity has been created. Hence it has been decided that an entrance examination would be the best way to get admissions to UG courses," the source said.
The government is trying to bring all universities to a consensus for the test whose exact modalities are being worked out.
There are 789 universities in the country that are under the University Grants Commission (UGC). This includes 359 state universities, 123 deemed to be universities, 47 central universities and 260 private universities. The government wants to bring all universities under one entrance test ambit.
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