The Human Resource Development Ministry has hold it’s plans to go ahead with a common engineering entrance examination for the year 2018. The AICTE (All India Council of Technical Education) was deliberating with the idea earlier in the year to conduct a common entrance examination for admission in engineering colleges across the country.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), that conducts the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), has been conducting the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for the last two years. However, the success of NEET would be further analysed by the HRD ministry before deciding about rolling the single entrance examination for engineering.
According to media reports, the idea has not been dumped completely. “The AICTE will submit a report about feasibility of conducting the exam in future,” a senior HRD official said according to the report.
Besides JEE, there are state run engineering entrance examinations that are presently conducted for admission in engineering courses across the country. Some colleges even grant admission to students based on their Class 12 board exams, while some others conduct their own entrance examination. Before NEET was introduced, situation of medical education was somewhat similar. But, the ongoing legal hassles and controversies surrounding NEET has left a bad impression and thus the ministry would give it a second thought for engineering entrance exam in the country.