WHAT WE NEED: We need a secure, valid, reliable, efficient, low-stress, and impartial system of examination to choose the best aspirants for the various professional graduate, postgraduate, and skill courses. This is essential to ensure that we get the best professionals to serve this nation.
SELECTION SYSTEMS: Transparency in selection and certification processes will lead to acceptance of the results as valid with international recognition of our education and training systems and qualifications. This will encourage our youth to train here and will encourage the youth from around the world to come here. UPSC civil services examinations, JEE, NEET UG, GATE, NDA, CLAT, and CA are among some of our most competitive national examinations. UPSC is a three-tier exam consisting of a preliminary exam, a main exam, and an interview or personality test. UPSC also conducts the NDA written test, which is followed by a Services Selection Board interview and an outdoor skills test. The National Testing Agency (NTA) was set up in November 2017 to conduct entrance examination admissions and recruitment such as NEET UG, JEE, CMAT, CUET, and many other national selections.
NTA AND THE MESSY NEET UG 2024: This year’s NEET exam has been marred by question paper leaks including on the darknet, organized cheating; mix-up of question papers stored in the vaults of two separate nationalized banks in Jhajjar, Haryana, followed by delays and addition of grace marks to over 1,500 aspirants; and a record 67 candidates securing a perfect 720 out of 720 marks. The UGC-NET examination by NTA stands cancelled this year as the integrity of the examination has been compromised. There have been controversies in the 2020 JEE and NEET, 2022 JEE, and 2024 JEE also, including one case of impersonation and nine cases of cheating. NEET is conducted in offline mode only. The weak link in the entire chain, from formation of the question bank, to selection of questions to transmission to the printing presses to storage and release on examination day to actual conduction of exams is the printing press. Either a security printing press should be used or a secure transmission of an encrypted soft copy to each examination centre just before the examination should be followed by use of high-speed laser printers at each centre. Online examinations like the CUET 2022 have had technical glitches affecting the conduct of the examination and the security of the question paper.
REFORMS FOR RAPID RESOLUTION OF COURT CASES: We have many dummy colleges, fake degree certificates, and fraudulent PhDs issued by corrupt authorities, leading to the loss of our reputation and the ruin of the careers of our youth. Justice delayed is justice denied. Efficient investigation, fast courts and quick dispensing of exemplary punishment to corrupt officials and criminal cheating gangs will go a long way in restoring confidence in our selection, examination and certification systems.
BRAIN AND RESOURCES GAIN INSTEAD OF DRAIN: The number of applicants for administrative, medical, and professional courses is multiple times the number of seats available, leading to organized criminal cheating gangs like the “Solver gang”, unregulated coaching, exorbitant capitation fees, and politics about reservation quotas. Hence many of our brightest minds are migrating abroad, seeking cheaper higher education, training, global recognition, and jobs. More than 1 million Indian students are studying in 85 countries outside India. To reverse this drain of human and financial resources that are the backbone of many Western universities, industries, and hospitals, we need to massively increase the number of medical, nursing, paramedical, dental, engineering, and professional high-quality institutions and provide affordable, even to the poor, higher education. In a globalized world, if we expect a population dividend then not only should our institutes and trainees be among the best in the world, but they should also attract the best brains to our shores. This supply and demand mismatch needs urgent resolution. An oversupply of professional college seats will lead to a reduction in the cost of education and the closure of low-quality colleges. We need to reverse brain drain into brain gain and demographic dividend.
EDUCATING AND EMPOWERING RURAL AND POOR YOUTH: Free schooling at the village, free college graduation or Vocational Education and Training (VET), or Career and Technical Education (CTE) in every sub-district i.e. “taluk”, “tehsil”, “community development block”, “mandal”, or “circle” and subsidized post-graduate education in every district with apprenticeship or internship in an attached district specialty and dental hospital, veterinary and agriculture research facility, industrial complex, banks and financial entities, law firms, hotels, media or entertainment offices, sports facility, infrastructure construction programs will provide a huge population dividend.
EMPLOYABLE TRAINEES NOT THEORY MASTERS NEEDED: Higher education with hands-on training, technical education, and skilling should be left to hospitals, manufacturing, and service industries to produce employable youth rather than universities which tend to produce theory masters who often have to be retrained by the employers. In 2020, when the Ethiopian government wanted their surgeon trained in thyroid and breast surgery, he was sent to me working in a non-teaching hospital for a fellowship in endocrine surgery and the certificate issued by us was attested and countersigned by various Indian government agencies. We were preferred to a formal course in a medical college. A dynamic efficient selection and training system will lead to a dynamic efficient workforce that will rapidly grow our economy and catapult us to a developed nation or Viksit Bharat@2047.
Dr P.S. Venkatesh Rao is consultant endocrine, breast and laparoscopic surgeon, Bengaluru.