New Delhi
In a step that will radically change how Indian universities admit students, the country's minister in charge of higher education has asked the 15 soon-to-be-established central universities to formulate a common admission test akin to the SAT in the United States, according to a government statement.
The common examination could later be extended to 25 other federally supported universities as well, reported the Business Standard, a newspaper. The Indian government in July increased its higher-education budget by an unprecedented 40 percent, to $3.1-billion, for 2009-10.
Every Indian university currently admits students based on their marks on a high-school-graduation exam and, occasionally, a personal interview. As a result, a student from, say, the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh who applies to the Universities of Delhi and of Bombay must visit both distant cities and be judged by different standards at both institutions.
In addition, the plethora of high-school-graduation tests around India makes it extremely difficult to gauge a student's relative abilities. For that reason, the higher-education minister, Kapil Sibal, has also announced plans to devise a common high-school-graduation test.
Comments
1. novain - October 17, 2009 at 01:53 pm
Some parts of the world like to follow US, for good or bad. While US universities are looking for alternatives to using SAT scores for admissions, here comes India willing to follow the inconclusive use of SAT testing.
2. allens - October 18, 2009 at 05:01 pm
Considering the major biases in India due to things like Caste, some sort of factually-based testing - one better-done than the SAT, certainly, namely one that's harder to study for (e.g., IQ testing) - would be advisable.