Quality before quota
August 19, 2011: The Times of India
The Supreme Court has directed central universities not to lower admission cut-offs for OBC students below 10% of the minimum eligibility criteria for general category students. This will bring little cheer to the harassed student community as a whole. Struggling to fill a large number of quota seats, Delhi University colleges recently issued the 10th cut-off list for OBC scholars. Some institutions plan to lower cut-offs further. Not that this will help all the intended beneficiaries, many of whom are unable to compete with cut-offs soaring as high as 99 to 100%. Fearing that further reductions will affect academic standards, the DU vice-chancellor has asked colleges not to reduce the differential merit by more than 10%.
Last year 20 DU colleges failed to fill 50% of their OBC seats. Worse, transfer of vacant quota seats to the general category isn’t policy in all institutions in the country. This, despite the fact meritorious students often find it difficult to gain entry into colleges of their choice. Transfer of seats is required to meet the demand for admissions of students scoring high marks. Ironically, 27% quota isn’t of much help to target groups even today. Many students in the reserved category get admission only to drop out mid-way, unable either to cope with academic pressures or pass exams. The way out of this mess is for government to make a sincere effort to improve the quality of primary and secondary education in India. The less privileged access government schools blighted by lack of facilities and teacher apathy and absenteeism. This puts them at a competitive disadvantage later in life. Higher education quotas won’t benefit the needy if schooling standards remain abysmally low.
