Good news for researchers: Now, more aspirants to qualify UGC-NET
Researchers vying for fellowship and teachers aspiring to bag eligibility for appointment in universities and colleges now have a reason to cheer.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has implemented a change in the qualifying criteria of the National Eligibility Test (NET) which will pave way for more candidates to qualify the examination in future.
The UGC-NET examination is conducted twice a year by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to determine the eligibility for assistant professor only or for junior research fellowship and assistant professor both.
In a public notice dated July 14, the UGC has clarified that earlier the qualifying criteria for the examination involved top 15% candidates in each subject and category who obtained minimum required marks in all the three papers according to their category. Under this arrangement, the overall percentage of candidates actually qualifying the examination remained below 5%.
In the examinations conducted between 2015 and 2017, the number of qualifying candidates hovered between 4.96 and 3.99%. A notice put up on the official website of theUniversity Grants Commission reads, “Subsequent to the orders of the high court of Kerala, the commission has revised the procedure and criteria of qualifying candidates and as such it has been decided that 6% of the total candidates who appear in the UGC-NET examination will be declared qualified with effect from June 2017 UGC NET examination.”
The decision gains importance in the light of the fact that CBSE UGC-NET 2017 registration procedure set to begin from August 1 and will conclude on August 30. The fee can be paid till August 31. This year, CBSE is expected to conduct the UGC NET-2017 on November 5. Earlier, the Board had scheduled the date to November 9. The detailed notification is likely to release on July 24 at cbsenet.nic.in.
On behalf of UGC, CBSE conducts NET twice in a year. However, the July round has been skipped this year. Though an official statement is awaited, reports claimed NET would no longer be held twice a year.