Context

• Every year, nearly 70 lakh students in India vie for a limited number of undergraduate seats through highly competitive entrance examinations such as JEE, NEET, CUET, and CLAT.
• The scarcity of seats in premier institutions has not only fuelled a multibillion-rupee coaching industry but also entrenched a culture of relentless pressure.
• Recent controversies, from financial misconduct at coaching centres to tragic student suicides, highlight the cracks in this system.
• It is time to reimagine undergraduate admissions in India, shifting from a model of hyper-competition to one that prioritises fairness, equity, and student well-being.

The Coaching Crisis and Its Toll

• The rise of the coaching industry is perhaps the most visible symptom of the problem.
• With 15 lakh aspirants for the JEE alone, centres charge exorbitant fees, often ₹6–7 lakh for two years, pushing families into financial strain.
• Students as young as 14 are enrolled in rigorous programmes where they spend their adolescence solving advanced problems from Irodov and Krotov, far beyond the needs of an undergraduate curriculum.
• This comes at a steep cost: stress, depression, social isolation, and in tragic cases, loss of life.
• Governments have attempted to regulate coaching centres, but regulation misses the root issue: the entrance examination system itself.
• By treating minuscule percentile differences as decisive, the system sidelines capable students while favouring those with financial means.
• What should matter a solid grasp of school-level physics, chemistry, and mathematics, is overshadowed by the artificial hierarchy created by rankings.

The Illusion of Meritocracy

• At its core, the system perpetuates an illusion of meritocracy.
• Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel has argued that societies become toxic when success is seen purely as a reflection of individual superiority, ignoring the roles of privilege and chance.
• In India, this illusion is intensified: a student from an affluent urban family with access to elite coaching is far more likely to secure a top rank than a rural student with equal potential but fewer resources.
• What results is not true merit, but stratified access disguised as fairness.

Learning from Global Models

• India need not reinvent the wheel. International experiences provide valuable lessons.
• The Netherlands, for instance, has implemented a weighted lottery for medical school admissions, ensuring that all students above a minimum threshold have a fair chance, while higher grades only marginally improve odds.
• This system reduces bias, promotes diversity, and eases pressure, recognising that fine-grained distinctions in scores are both irrelevant and unjust.
• Similarly, China’s 2021 “double reduction” policy radically curtailed for-profit tutoring, nationalising education support to reduce financial burdens and protect student well-being.
• Both cases demonstrate that systemic reform is not only possible but also effective in balancing excellence with equity.

The Path Forward: A Vision for India

• For India, the way forward lies in simplifying admissions and trusting the school system.
• Class 12 board examinations already provide a rigorous curriculum sufficient to gauge readiness for higher education.
• A threshold, say, 80% in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, could serve as the eligibility bar. Within this pool, seats could be allotted through a weighted lottery, with higher scores modestly improving chances but not monopolising opportunity.
• Reservation policies could be integrated, with special emphasis on rural and government school students to ensure mobility and social justice.
• If entrance examinations are retained, they should be delinked from private profit. Coaching could be banned or nationalised, with free online materials made universally available.
• To further dismantle the hierarchy among IITs, an annual student exchange programme and inter-campus faculty transfers could create diversity, integration, and uniform academic standards.

Conclusion

• Ultimately, the question is whether India will continue a toxic rat race that scars its youth or embrace a system rooted in fairness, sanity, and egalitarianism.
• Moving to a lottery-based admissions process would free students from the treadmill of coaching, restore adolescence as a time for learning and growth, and make elite education accessible to all qualified students, not just the privileged few.
• India’s education system stands at a crossroads and the choice is between perpetuating a narrow definition of merit that privileges wealth and burns out its brightest, or adopting a model that balances excellence with compassion and equality.
• The path forward is clear, one that allows young people to thrive as learners, citizens, and human beings, not mere machines chasing percentiles.