Students seen within the precinct of Supreme Court during the hearing of alleged NEET paper leak case in New Delhi on July 18, 2024. | Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
Recently, the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for undergraduate medical courses (MBBS and BDS) and the National Testing Agency (NTA) that conducts this exam have been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. While many have already discussed the allegations of wrong-doing threadbare, let us take a step back to look at the bigger picture to put things in context.
This year, over 23 lakh students wrote NEET, competing for around 1.1 lakh MBBS seats across the country. This includes 56,405 seats in government medical colleges and 2,765 seats in private medical colleges. The annual fee in government medical colleges ranges from ₹13,000 to ₹74,000. In private medical colleges the annual fee varies from nearly ₹13 lakh to ₹22 lakh. For the government quota seats in private medical colleges, the annual fee is around ₹5 lakh.
Shift to a two-level exam
Government college seats and government quota seats in private colleges are allotted based on the NEET scores rank list. Even a small increase in NEET score can mean getting into a top government medical college with a much lower fee. This makes NEET a very high stakes exam.
High stakes and large numbers is a deadly combination inviting cheating attempts. Just more policing cannot stop so many determined efforts to cheat. We need structural changes that significantly reduce the value gained by cheating.
One such structural change is to conduct NEET as a two-level exam. The first level exam is a qualifier exam that is taken by all aspirants (say 23 lakh). Only those who qualify (say 5 lakh students) are allowed to write the second level exam which is used to create the rank list.
The first level exam has huge scale but is low-stakes as it does not directly ensure a seat. The second-level exam has high-stakes but a smaller scale and can be more tightly controlled.
Restoring the sanctity of the exam process is just the first step needed. There is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed.
Higher qualifying cut-off
The original argument presented while making NEET mandatory for all medical seats was the worry that rich students were simply buying up seats in private medical colleges. Without putting in the hard work to learn medicine, these students were getting degrees. These unqualified doctors would pose a danger to the health of our people, it was felt. That’s why NEET was not just introduced as an entrance test, but also as a minimum eligibility filter.
But today the cut-off for qualifying NEET is really low (just 164 marks out of 720) and nearly 13 lakh students have qualified NEET this year for 1.1 lakh seats. About 65,000 of these students will get government seats based on the rank list.
What happens to the remaining 45,000 seats? These are management quota seats that are given to the students who can pay the highest fees. A poor (or middle class) student who scores 400 marks in NEET does not get a medical seat, but a rich student who scores 170 out of 720 buys a seat in a private medical college.
This system is unfair to the student who scores more marks but not enough to get a government seat. More importantly, this nullifies the original purpose of NEET which was to ensure money power does not threaten the health of the nation.
Why is NTA qualifying 12 lakh candidates when there are only 1.1 lakh seats? Why not increase the cut off to at least 250 (35% of 720)? Why not limit the number of qualified students to three lakh students (three times the seats available)? This will reduce the number of qualified rich students who can buy seats, forcing private medical colleges to reduce their fees to reasonable levels.
A more egalitarian solution would be to remove the management quota system and simply allocate all the medical seats (both government and private colleges) based on the NEET rank list through a common counselling process. There can be different fee structures but all admissions would be based on the same rank list.
Restrict number of repeat attempts
The number of NEET repeaters has been increasing year after year. These are students who after their 12th boards, spend one, two or even three years just preparing for NEET and writing the exam year after year. This is one of the reasons for the increase in the number of students writing NEET each year.
The increasing number of repeaters puts the students who pass out of Class 12 at a major disadvantage. The present situation forces aspirants to typically spend two to three years (after class 12) in coaching centers in order to do well in NEET. If unchecked, this will soon lead to more and more years spent repeating. Restricting the maximum number of NEET attempts to two can go a long way in controlling this.
As we think about ways to streamline NEET and medical college entrance, it is important to remember that entrance exams like NEET put poor students at a major disadvantage. Affirmative action like Tamil Nadu’s 7.5% quota for government school students can go a long way in addressing this disadvantage.
Balaji Sampath is a physics and math teacher and the founder of AhaGuru. He is also a social activist and the founder of Aid India, which works on education and housing for poor communities. Reach him at balajisampath@ahaguru.com
