National Eligibility Test

The basic objective is to determine eligibility for college & university level lectureship and for award of Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) for Indian nationals in order to ensure minimum standards for the entrants in the teaching profession and research.

The test for Junior Research Fellowship is being conducted since 1984. The Government of India, through its notification dated 22 July 1988 entrusted the task of conducting the eligibility test for lectureship to University Grants Commission. Consequently, UGC conducted the first ever National Eligibility Test (NET), common to both Eligibility for Lectureship and Junior Research Fellowship in December 1989. Since then it is conducted twice every year, once each in June & December.

In December 2013, Public Sector Undertakings such as Indian Oil Corporation and others decided to use the National Eligibility Test scores for recruitment purpose in various streams, particularly, management. The UGC has decided to allow PSUs to use NET result database to recruit master degree holders. This will help PSUs to shortlist eligible candidates, UGC approved this based upon the fact that for past few years fewer candidates opted to take the NET exam due to deceased opportunity in education sector. UGC-NET has been experiencing a low turnout in the forthcoming examination to be held on 29 December, 2013. As compared to the UGC-NET held in December 2012 which had a total of 28,824 candidates, the number has fallen by around 2,500 candidates this year. UGC is hopeful that NET scores will be used along with GATE scores for recruitment in PSUs soon

While a section of academicians advocated the abolition of the National Eligibility Test, the All India Federation of University and College Teachers’ Organisation (AIFUCTO) has strongly opposed attempts to scrap the National Eligibility Test (NET). The organization advocated that the test improves the standard of teaching in the country and instead of abolishing it all together the government must revisit some of its provisions that are making it flawed and unimplementable.

National Eligibility Test (NET) of June 2012 was the most controversial examination because its results were published on 18 September 2012 & after the publication of the results, the Commission allegedly altered the Test’s qualification norms by mandating that candidates in the general category score an aggregate of 65 per cent for all three of the NET’s papers to become eligible for lectureship. The corresponding figure for the OBC category is 60 per cent and that of the SC/ST category is 55 per cent.According to the appearing students, in the original notification of the UGC it was specified that candidates in the general category should score at least 40 per cent for papers one and two and 50 per cent for paper three to be eligible for consideration for the final preparation of the result.

UGC set an aggregate pass criteria General -65%, OBC - 60% and SC/ST - 55%. In the light of the student protests and representations, the UGC released a supplementary list on 12 November 2012, which although qualified a few more candidates, but it did not specify any criteria for the revised list.Added to this was the fact that there were anomalies in the results declared where candidates securing less than 50 percent aggregate were declared as qualified whereas many general candidates with more 60 percent remained unqualified.

More than 7000 candidates approached the Kerala High Court against the University Grants Commission (UGC). The Kerala High court declared as illegal the new norms fixed by UGC for the National Eligibility Test (NET) for college and university lectureship. The court held that fixing of higher aggregate marks for three categories (General, OBC and SC/ST), that too just before the announcements of results, cannot be justified as the same was "not supportable by law". 

In the light of this judgement, the University Grants Commission added the specific note "NOTIFICATION REGARDING PROCEDURE AND CRITERIA FOR DECLARATION OF RESULT OF UGC NET TO BE HELD ON 30TH DECEMBER, 2012 " on its website just two days before the examination.It also listed stepwise clearance criteria for candidates of different categories and subjects according to the competitive cutoffs fixed by the University Grants Commission, with an aim to clear top 15 percent candidates only