CUET and the Centralisation of College Admissions: Who Really Wins?

CUET and the Centralisation of College Admissions: Who Wins?

Last Updated: August 26, 2026

This article is part of our series on India’s social and policy developments, where we examine how major reforms shape access and inequality beyond headlines.

When the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) was introduced, it was presented as a long-overdue correction to an increasingly distorted university admissions system.

Board marks, critics argued, were not comparable across different examination systems. Cut-offs at some universities had reached extraordinary levels. Students could find themselves competing not simply on academic ability, but on differences in marking practices between boards.

A single, standardised examination promised to change that.

The logic was compelling: give students across India a common benchmark, reduce dependence on board marks, and allow admission to multiple universities through one national examination.

A few admission cycles later, CUET has undoubtedly changed the rules of the game.

But there is a more difficult question now:

Has CUET reduced inequality—or has it simply moved inequality to a different part of the admissions process?

The answer is more complicated than either supporters or critics sometimes suggest.

CUET has addressed genuine weaknesses in the old system. For students from boards and regions that were disadvantaged by highly competitive board-based admissions, the common examination can provide a more transparent route into universities.

But standardisation does not automatically produce equality.

A common examination creates a common benchmark. It does not create common circumstances in which students prepare for that benchmark.

But there is another question hiding behind the debate about fairness: who gains when university admissions themselves become more centralised?

CUET is not merely an examination reform. It is also a shift in the architecture of Indian higher education—from a fragmented system in which universities, boards and institutions exercised different forms of admissions authority toward a more nationally coordinated gateway.

That shift can create efficiency. It can also redistribute power.

Why CUET Was Introduced—and What It Actually Fixed

It would be intellectually dishonest to discuss CUET only as a source of new problems.

The system it replaced had serious weaknesses.

For years, admission to some of India's most sought-after undergraduate programmes depended heavily on Class XII board marks. Differences in examination patterns, assessment standards and marking practices meant that a student's admission prospects could be influenced by the board from which they graduated.

Extremely high cut-offs also created a peculiar form of competition. Students were not necessarily competing against one another through a common examination; they were competing through different assessment systems whose marks were then compared as if they were perfectly interchangeable.

CUET introduced a different principle:

one examination, one broad benchmark, multiple institutions.

That has genuine advantages.

• It creates a common assessment framework.
• It reduces the direct dependence on board percentages.
• It gives students from different boards a shared route into participating universities.
• It can make the admissions process more predictable.
• It can reduce some of the distortions created by board-specific marking patterns.

For students from lesser-known boards or regions who previously felt disadvantaged by the prestige and perceived difficulty of particular school systems, this can be a meaningful improvement.

So the problem is not the idea of a national entrance examination itself.

The deeper problem is assuming that a standardised test automatically produces a level playing field.

Standardisation can equalise the examination while leaving unequal the ability to prepare for it.

The New Inequality: From Board Marks to Preparation Advantage

This is where the CUET debate becomes more interesting.

The old system concentrated inequality partly in school-board differences.

The new system can shift some of that inequality toward preparation.

A student appearing for the same examination as everyone else may technically have the same paper, the same format and the same scoring framework.

But students do not arrive at that examination with identical resources.

One may have access to private coaching, expensive test series, reliable internet, a quiet study environment and personalised academic guidance.

Another may be preparing largely from school textbooks, public resources and whatever guidance teachers can provide.

Both students face the same question paper.

But they have not necessarily had the same opportunity to prepare for it.

This distinction is central to understanding educational inequality in the CUET era.

Equality of examination conditions is not the same as equality of preparation conditions.

The Quiet Eclipse of School Education

Perhaps one of CUET's most important effects is also one of its least visible: the changing relationship between school education and university admission.

Class XII was traditionally understood as the culmination of twelve years of schooling.

It was supposed to represent more than examination performance. School education was expected to build conceptual foundations, intellectual curiosity, disciplinary understanding, communication skills and the ability to engage with ideas.

But entrance examinations can change classroom incentives.

A question increasingly familiar in schools is:

“Will this come in CUET?”

If the answer is no, the perceived value of the topic can fall.

This creates a subtle danger.

School education can begin to function as preparation for the next examination rather than as education in its own right.

The danger is not that students prepare for CUET.

Of course they should.

The danger is when everything that cannot be easily tested becomes treated as less important.

Curiosity becomes secondary to relevance.

Exploration becomes secondary to scoring.

Intellectual depth becomes secondary to examination efficiency.

When that happens, the entrance examination does not merely measure education.

It begins to reshape what education itself is expected to be.

Coaching Culture: A Problem Repackaged, Not Solved

There is another irony.

CUET was introduced partly to make admissions more transparent and less dependent on the distortions of the previous system. Yet standardised examinations naturally create demand for specialised preparation.

And wherever an examination becomes important, a preparation market follows.

Coaching can provide genuine value. Good teachers, structured practice, mock examinations and feedback can help students understand the examination better.

The problem is not coaching itself.

The problem arises when access to high-quality preparation becomes strongly correlated with family income and geography.

Standardised examinations reward not only subject knowledge but also familiarity with examination patterns, speed, accuracy and repeated practice.

Those advantages can be purchased, at least partly, through:

• private coaching
• premium test series
• personalised mentoring
• technology-enabled learning platforms
• specialised preparation materials
• greater access to mock examinations

A student in a major urban centre may have several competing coaching options.

A student in a smaller town or rural area may have far fewer.

A first-generation learner may also lack something even more difficult to measure: admissions knowledge.

Which subjects should be taken? Which courses require which combinations? How should preferences be structured? Which university rules matter? What does a particular score actually mean in the context of a specific course?

These are forms of educational capital.

They may not appear on a balance sheet, but they can influence outcomes.

What looks like meritocracy on paper can therefore become market-mediated access in practice.

The Geography of CUET Advantage

India's educational inequality is not simply a question of rich versus poor.

It is also a question of geography.

Access to experienced teachers, coaching centres, digital infrastructure, libraries, peer groups and admissions guidance varies dramatically across the country.

A national examination can therefore have an unintended paradox at its centre.

It can make the rules national without making the capacity to compete national.

The examination may be identical in Delhi, Patna, Guwahati, Jaipur or a smaller district town.

The ecosystem surrounding the student is not.

This is why a serious discussion of CUET cannot stop at the examination hall.

The real question is whether students have reasonably comparable opportunities to reach that examination at their full potential.

Centralisation vs Diversity in Higher Education

CUET also raises a broader question about how much standardisation India should introduce into a higher-education system that has historically been diverse.

Indian universities have emerged from different social, linguistic, cultural and regional contexts.

Institutions have traditionally reflected:

• regional priorities
• language contexts
• local social needs
• different academic traditions
• different institutional missions

A common national admissions framework brings efficiency and comparability.

But comparability can come at a cost if institutional differences are treated as problems rather than strengths.

A university designed around a particular regional or disciplinary context may reasonably want to evaluate students differently from another institution.

The challenge is therefore to distinguish between unnecessary variation and valuable diversity.

Not every difference is an inefficiency.

Some differences are precisely what make a higher-education system intellectually healthy.

Who Wins When Admissions Become Centralised?

The answer depends on what kind of “winning” we mean. Centralisation can reduce administrative complexity while simultaneously concentrating influence.

Students Can Gain a Common National Gateway

For students, the strongest argument for CUET is that the admissions gateway becomes less dependent on the particular board from which they emerge. A student from a state board can compete through a common examination rather than relying entirely on board percentages that may be difficult to compare with those of another system.

But the student advantage is uneven. Those with greater access to preparation, information and technology can be better positioned to exploit the new gateway.

Universities Can Gain Administrative Efficiency

Participating universities can potentially benefit from a common national applicant pool and a more standardised admissions process. The burden of comparing students from multiple boards can be reduced, and the admissions process can become more predictable.

Yet efficiency can come with a trade-off: the more admissions are organised around a common national mechanism, the less room individual institutions may have to design selection systems around their own academic missions.

The National Admissions Infrastructure Gains Influence

Centralised admissions necessarily increase the importance of the national examination infrastructure that administers the process. The institution that controls the examination gateway does not decide who is academically worthy in isolation, but it becomes a critical part of the pathway through which millions of students seek access to higher education.

That makes governance, accountability, examination reliability and transparency far more important than they would be in a fragmented admissions system.

The Coaching and EdTech Market Can Gain Scale

A single national examination creates a single, scalable preparation market. Coaching providers, test-series companies and digital learning platforms can build products for a much larger common audience.

This is not inherently undesirable. Competition can improve preparation resources. But it also creates a paradox: a reform designed to make admissions more uniform can simultaneously expand the commercial market around preparation.

Universities and States May Lose Some Autonomy

The most important institutional question is not whether universities lose all control—they do not—but whether a common national gateway gradually changes the balance between institutional autonomy and national standardisation.

Universities have different missions. States have different educational ecosystems. Regions have different linguistic and social contexts.

If every institution increasingly evaluates applicants through the same national mechanism, diversity in admissions philosophy can narrow even when the universities themselves remain formally distinct.

Schools May Lose Some Influence Over the Admissions Journey

As university admission becomes more strongly tied to CUET performance, the relative importance of Class XII board results can decline for participating programmes. That can change the incentives facing schools and students.

The risk is that school education becomes increasingly viewed as preparation for an entrance examination rather than as a complete educational experience.

The Centralisation Trade-Off

The centralisation question can therefore be reduced to a simple trade-off:

Centralisation can reduce fragmentation, but it can also concentrate dependence.

It can make admissions more comparable, but potentially less institution-specific.

It can create a common national opportunity, while leaving unequal preparation conditions untouched.

It can reduce one set of gatekeepers while creating greater importance for another layer of national infrastructure.

That does not make centralisation inherently good or bad. It means that the gains in efficiency must be weighed against the costs to autonomy, diversity and resilience.

Centralisation Also Creates a New Question: What Happens When the Gateway Fails?

There is another issue that deserves attention as admissions become more dependent on common infrastructure.

In a fragmented system, a problem in one university's admissions process may remain relatively contained. In a highly centralised system, a disruption in a shared examination or digital infrastructure can have consequences across a much larger student population.

That makes redundancy, transparency, grievance mechanisms and institutional accountability essential parts of the reform.

The more centralised the gateway, the more important it becomes to make that gateway resilient.

The Humanities Problem No One Wants to Address

The tension becomes especially visible in the humanities.

History, political science, sociology, philosophy and related disciplines depend on abilities that are not always easy to capture through a standardised multiple-choice examination.

They require students to interpret evidence, construct arguments, understand competing perspectives, recognise historical context and engage with ambiguity.

These are not merely factual skills.

They are forms of reasoning.

A multiple-choice examination can test some elements of disciplinary knowledge. It can test factual understanding, concepts and certain forms of application.

But there is a larger question:

Can a system designed primarily for standardised ranking adequately identify the students most capable of deep intellectual engagement?

The answer need not be no.

But it should make policymakers cautious about treating a single examination score as a complete representation of academic potential.

The problem is not that MCQs are inherently inferior.

The problem is that what is easiest to standardise is not always what is most valuable to measure.

Does CUET Really Level the Playing Field?

The fairest answer is:

It levels some parts of the playing field while leaving—and in some cases potentially shifting—other inequalities intact.

CUET can reduce the disadvantage created by different board-marking cultures.

But it cannot, by itself, equalise:

• family income
• access to coaching
• digital infrastructure
• quality of schooling
• language resources
• study environments
• admissions counselling
• parental educational capital
• access to repeated testing and preparation

This is not a uniquely Indian problem.

Every standardised admissions system confronts some version of it.

The important issue is whether policymakers recognise the limitation and build compensating structures around the examination.

Reform or Replacement?

None of this is an argument for returning to a system of inflated board cut-offs.

The old system had genuine inequities, and simply restoring it would not solve them.

Nor should every criticism of CUET be interpreted as opposition to standardised assessment.

A common benchmark can be useful.

The question is what we expect that benchmark to accomplish.

Replacing one blunt instrument with another is not necessarily reform.

Real reform requires continuous adjustment.

It asks whether the system is producing the outcomes it was designed to produce—and who is being left behind in the process.

What a Fairer CUET System Would Require

If CUET is to become a gateway rather than merely a gatekeeper, the system needs to evolve beyond the examination itself.

1. Keep the Common Benchmark—but Allow Appropriate Flexibility

A national examination can remain the core benchmark while universities retain carefully designed mechanisms to assess dimensions that a common test cannot adequately capture.

Depending on the discipline and institution, this could include appropriate use of:

• board performance
• written assessments
• portfolios
• subject-specific assessments
• interviews or other structured evaluations

The objective should not be to recreate arbitrary admissions systems.

It should be to recognise that different academic disciplines may legitimately require different forms of evidence.

2. Build a Public Preparation Infrastructure

If the country wants a genuinely national entrance examination, it needs something approaching a genuinely national preparation ecosystem.

That means substantial public investment in:

• free high-quality preparation materials
• official mock examinations
• regional-language resources
• offline preparation support
• school-based guidance
• digital access for disadvantaged students
• transparent admissions information

The principle should be simple:

If the examination is national, access to preparation for that examination should not depend overwhelmingly on where a student is born or how much their family can spend.

3. Measure the System by Outcomes, Not Just Efficiency

One of the attractions of centralisation is administrative efficiency.

That matters.

But an admissions system should not be judged only by how efficiently it processes applications.

It should also be evaluated through questions of:

• access
• social mobility
• regional representation
• student success
• academic preparedness
• retention and graduation
• equity across socioeconomic groups

A system can be extremely efficient at ranking students and still reproduce inequality.

4. Recognise That Standardisation Is Not the Same as Fairness

This may be the most important principle of all.

Standardisation asks:

Are students being measured using the same instrument?

Fairness asks a larger question:

Are students being given a genuinely fair opportunity to demonstrate their potential?

The two questions overlap.

They are not identical.

The Larger Lesson for Indian Education

CUET is ultimately part of a much larger transformation in Indian education.

India is moving toward increasingly standardised, data-driven and technology-enabled systems of assessment and selection.

That transition has enormous potential.

It can reduce arbitrary decision-making, improve transparency and create national pathways that were previously fragmented.

But technology and standardisation can also create a dangerous illusion.

They can make inequality less visible precisely because the process looks objective.

A common score appears neutral.

An algorithm appears neutral.

A standardised test appears neutral.

But the inputs surrounding those systems are not necessarily equal.

The challenge for policymakers is therefore not simply to make admissions more objective.

It is to make the entire opportunity structure more equitable.

So, Has CUET Failed?

No.

That would be too simplistic.

CUET has addressed real weaknesses in the old admissions regime and created a common national benchmark that can improve comparability.

But neither has it solved the deeper problem of educational inequality.

That would also be too simplistic.

The more accurate conclusion is that CUET has changed the location of the inequality problem.

Some inequalities that existed in board-based admissions have been reduced.

Others remain.

Some may now appear more strongly in access to preparation, information, technology and educational capital.

That does not make CUET a failure.

It makes CUET an unfinished reform.

More importantly, it means the debate should no longer be framed only as CUET versus the old system. The real question is what kind of national admissions architecture India wants to build next.

Final Thought: A Level Playing Field Is More Than a Common Question Paper

The promise of CUET was powerful because the old system genuinely needed reform.

But fairness in education cannot be achieved simply by giving every student the same examination.

It requires confronting the unequal circumstances in which students prepare for that examination.

A student from a well-resourced urban school and a first-generation learner from a resource-constrained rural school may sit in front of the same computer and answer the same questions.

That is equality at one moment.

It does not necessarily represent equality of opportunity across the years that came before it.

India therefore faces a larger policy challenge.

The goal should not be to abandon standardisation.

It should be to surround standardisation with enough public investment, flexibility and institutional intelligence to make it genuinely fair.

CUET can be a gateway to opportunity—but only if the country ensures that the road leading to that gateway is not itself divided by income, geography and access.

And if that gateway is going to become increasingly central to Indian higher education, another principle matters just as much: efficiency must not become a substitute for institutional autonomy, and centralisation must not become concentration without accountability.

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Author Note:

The Common University Entrance Test is still a relatively young national admissions reform, and its long-term effects on access, equity and academic standards will take time to assess. This article examines the emerging policy trade-offs rather than presenting a final verdict. As with any large-scale reform, CUET’s success will depend on continuous review, institutional flexibility, evidence-based correction and sustained public investment.

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