Everything That Went Wrong with UGC NET 2024: Is Anybody Even Answerable?

The National Testing Agency (NTA) has faced scores of serious allegations of misconduct in national level entrance examinations it conducts. Earlier this year, these allegations first surfaced when a whopping 67 students received a perfect score of 720 in the NEET (UG) examination as opposed to only 2 perfect scorers in the preceding year. This result caused a massive stir countrywide after being released 10 days prior to the expected result date, coinciding with the general election results. Amidst these serious allegations, many UGC NET aspirants were unwilling to take an exam conducted by this agency that should have been under investigation for the alleged paper leaks, grace marks scam, exam center allocation scam, etc.

Anyone who has had the (mis)fortune of appearing for the UGC National Eligibility Test (NET) exam since the National Testing Agency (NTA) took over its conduct in 2018 is well aware of the examiners’ love for chronology-based questions. So let us begin with a brief chronology of the major developments related to the UGC NET examinations 2024.

A Short Chronology of Events

• 28th March 2024: The UGC released a notification announcing that as a part of the implementation of NEP 2020, the NET exam would now be used as an entrance exam for PhD admissions in different universities/higher educational institutions.

• 4th June 2024: Reports of serious discrepancies in the NEET (UG) results raised crucial concerns about the credibility of the NTA.

• 18th June 2024: Despite pushback against NTA from many quarters due to the ongoing investigation of malpractices, NTA conducted a nationwide UGC NET exam. (It is to be noted that unlike many previous exams that were held in the Computer Based mode over a period of several days, this exam was conducted for all 83 disciplines in two shifts on one single day, employing the OMR sheet method.)

• 19th June 2024: The Ministry of Education issued a notification announcing the cancellation of the exam held a day before. It stated, “On 19th June, 2024, the University Grants Commission (UGC) received certain inputs from National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs on the Examination. These inputs prima-facie indicate that the integrity of the aforesaid examination may have been compromised.” The matter was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Many other upcoming exams such as NEET PG, CSIR UGC NET and NCET were also canceled within the next ten days.

• 11th July 2024: The CBI denied the possibility of a large-scale conspiracy in the matter and filed a chargesheet against a school student for allegedly doctoring a screenshot that was used as evidence in the cancellation of the exam.

• 2nd August 2024: UGC and NTA released fresh dates for the examination (despite CBI denying the paper leak theory) between 21st August 2024 to 4th September 2024. This exam reverted to the Computer Based Test (CBT) mode.

• 7th September 2024: Provisional answer keys and question papers were displayed for inviting challenges by students for a fee of Rs 200/- for each question that is challenged. The answer keys were full of errors with students reporting as many as 10+ or even 30+ incorrect answers in some disciplines. This article will deal with these myriad inconsistencies in detail elsewhere.

• 13th September 2024: Amid pushback from students unable to pay such a hefty amount for challenging the answer key, the answer key challenging deadline was extended till 14th September 2024.

Some specimens of blunders in the answer key

Given below are a few examples of the blunders in the answer key provided by the UGC. This is not an exhaustive list since undertaking such an exercise would be near impossible considering the scale of errors. These examples are illustrative of the kind of glaring errors that are a common feature of a majority of the answer keys uploaded on the portal. These errors raise serious questions not just about the competence of the authorities in question but also points towards a pattern of potentially deliberate errors, possibly to get more and more students to pay the non-refundable challenge fee amount.

A match-the-following question in Shift 2 of the English examination was given as follows:

A simple Google Search will reveal that any combination of answers for this question will invariably be incorrect because the options in List II do not mention the year 1992 – the year the Saint Lucian literary star Derek Walcott won the Nobel Prize.

A question from the Sociology examination asked students to identify the term associated with the following definition: “The term refers to movement away from a residential location either within the same country or to another country.” The four options were: Immigration, Emigration, Migration and Forced Migration. As per the provisional answer key, the answer for this question is Emigration. Refuting this claim doesn’t require rocket science, just Rs 200 by each student who wants to be marked for their correct answer.

One of the most alarming cases came to light when candidates reported as many as 35+ confirmed incorrect answers in the provisional answer key for one shift of the History examination. Following great hue and cry by students over the prospect of potentially paying nearly 7 to 8 times the amount they paid for the examination form in order to correct what was evidently NTA’s blunder, NTA did change the answer key on the portal. However, it is worth noting that this massive mistake was not even acknowledged in any notification. Students simply logged in to find that the old answer key had been swapped without any prior intimation. This too is a dubious action especially considering that NTA did not formally admit its mistake, thereby still compelling students from other disciplines and shifts to pay a non-refundable fee for mistakes they did not commit either.

Why do candidates suspect a scam?

This practice of levying a non-refundable answer challenge fee is by no means new. However, the reason why students are so outraged this time is because of the sheer scale of errors in almost every exam’s answer key. The mass scale of these seemingly unbelievable errors has compelled the students to suspect potentially deliberate foul play.

Consider this: if the NTA answer key had claimed that the sun orbits around the earth, then lakhs of candidates would have to pay NTA Rs 200/- each to be marked for choosing the option that said it is in fact vice versa.

Coming back to chronology

In the English NET second shift examination, 13 out of 100 questions in paper 2 (discipline based) were mere chronology questions. From arranging literary works and films in chronological order of publication/premiering, to arranging writers in order of their birth dates, a major chunk of the paper consisted of questions that presupposed encyclopedic proportions of rote learning and memory from the aspirants. It has been reiterated over and over by stakeholders in academia how an objective paper form for evaluating students from humanities and social sciences backgrounds is principally unfounded. As if to make matters worse, NTA has steadily increased the number of clear-cut chronology questions that have absolutely no bearing on an individual’s ability to pursue research or to teach. On top of the absurdity of this form of evaluation, now students have to wade through the treacherous quicksand that is the procedure to challenge the error-addled answer key.

In Lieu of a Conclusion

This article touches upon just the tip of the iceberg. The actual evaluation of the total number of incorrect questions and answers would require untiring efforts of a whole team of bonafide fact checkers. It should be noted that NTA has created no mechanism for students to find out whether their challenges have been accepted, considered or even viewed by the concerned officials.

In lieu of a conclusion, here are some pressing questions in the minds of thousands of students for the concerned officials in NTA and UGC:

1. If the CBI did not find any credible evidence of a paper leak after 18 June 2024 examination, why were the original results withheld and why was the re-exam announced?

2. Who is responsible for creating these question papers and answer keys? What are their academic credentials?

3. When these paper setters cannot get information right even when they have the liberty to use all reference books, archives and digital resources, how can they expect NET candidates to know such gargantuan volumes of factual information by heart?

4. How will the amount of Rs 200 per challenge be utilized by the NTA? Will there be a public record of the amount gathered and spent? If not, then why not?

5. What is the justification for conducting exams for a single subject in two different shifts? Why aren’t the datasets used for the normalization process followed for exams held in two shifts made publicly available?

6. Why can’t NTA refund the amount students have paid if their claims are verified? Why isn’t a final answer key released before the publication of the final result?

It is likely that these questions will remain unanswered and unheard, but how long can things go on this way? What is the future of education and research in this country when students are put through such rigorous yet completely avoidable challenges? Does no one really owe lakhs of aspirants any answers?

Nalini Prateek is an independent researcher.