Who Tests The Testers?
Nodal testing agency is fast losing legitimacy. UGC-NET’s exam issues were sheer incompetence
NTA is becoming a burlesque act. The latest fiasco – three papers of UGC-NET, the qualifying test to teach in colleges, and apply for PhDs, have been cancelled – beggars belief, for the reason they were cancelled. Several questions were repeated from 2024, there were factual inaccuracies in names, mistakes that are being categorised as ‘typos’, and translation errors. This, in a test to select future professors and academics, from a pool of 20,000 applicants. What makes the incompetence many times worse is that NTA took at least seven weeks to cancel the test. So, think of it. The papers on Sociology, English and Commerce were set, printed, and the exam conducted across 300 cities. Students complained during the exam about papers riddled with mistakes. To no avail.
Now, what must be made public is the inquiry’s details. Because this is not what Nilekani’s high-powered committee will fix. This is not what any new minister will fix. Shunting out bureaucrats and airdropping new ones won’t fix this. This is a DNA problem – from the setting of papers to their vetting, printing, and conduct – the whole process is contaminated with absence of expertise. Exam setting appears ad hoc, with no ownership and zero oversight. NTA’s circular, cancelling the tests and announcing new dates, admits as much when it elaborates on the mistakes. Apart from repeated questions, it points to “misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in stem wording of questions, grammatical errors, gender and number agreement errors…and non-standard coined terms for established concepts.” Non-standard coined terms? Garbled book titles? Gender-number mismatch? This sounds suspiciously like AI at work. Will there be an investigation into this? Who set the papers, who vetted them? Is there a protocol in place, or a code of ethics on using AI assists? What are the penalties…are there any, to begin with?
The question, in this instance, is larger than paper leaks. What does it mean for NTA’s legitimacy? UGC-NET certifies who is fit to teach and research in India’s higher education system. We need to ask whether NTA, in its current avatar, is fit to hold exams that determine the future of tens of thousands.
https://x.com/maheshperi/status/2089023967910907911?s=20
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
