Private universities and Private deemed universities run fully independent, decentralised admissions, typically starting early in the calendar year. Public universities and their affiliated colleges, however, wait for the central admission agencies to complete entrance exams and counselling. This has created a clear divide between autonomous private admissions and centralised public-sector admissions.
Every academic session, higher education institutions rush to complete their admission process and start the session as per their academic calendar. Admission processes differ sharply between public and private universities. National and state bodies conduct entrance tests for programmes in HEIs affiliated with universities and deemed universities in the public system. After NEP 2020, the centralised admissions were introduced to relieve students from hassles of appearing in multiple admission tests, ensure a single window admission system, improve equity in access to multiple institutions, reduce cost, and bring fairness.
While participation in this process is mandatory for central universities/HEIs, it remains voluntary for state and private universities. Private universities and private deemed universities run fully independent, decentralised admissions, typically starting early in the calendar year. Public universities and their affiliated colleges, however, wait for the central admission agencies to complete entrance exams and counselling. This has created a clear divide between autonomous private admissions and centralised public-sector admissions.
A recent report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education has also flagged the delays in central admission test-based admissions conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA). The committee expressed concern over the repeated delays in the declaration of the results of CUET by NTA in the last few years. Such delays have a cascading effect on the academic calendar, affecting everything from the commencement of the academic session and associated activities to the final placement of students and convocation in certain instances. The report notes that among the 14 major competitive exams conducted by NTA in 2024, UGC-NET, CSIR-NET and NEET-PG examinations were postponed, NEET-UG suffered paper leaks, and CUET results got deferred. Further, JEE Mains (January 2025) required the withdrawal of multiple questions due to errors.
Such recurring issues- errors in question papers, improprieties in examination conduction, paper leaks, deferment of admission tests, and delays lower the confidence of examinees in particular and erode the public trust in the system in general. Alongside, due to the uncertainties of admission processes, the admission seekers search for alternatives for the earliest admission. With the opening of admission windows in private sector institutions quite early, the students for whom cost is not a challenge and who do not want to waste time are drawn to early private-sector options, often sweetened with discounted fees, stipends, or free laptops.
As these private HEIs begin classes early, students who have already paid significant fees often cannot wait for potential seats in public institutions, especially due to financial pressures. Meanwhile, aspirants for whom affordability is a major concern continue waiting for admissions to public HEIs, despite the delays.
A cue can be had from the 2025-26 session timelines, where UG admission registrations in most of the central universities, i.e. public HEIs, commenced in July 2025, while many private HEIs had already started their classes around this time. Extraordinary delay in admissions through NEET PG is another classic case worth observing, as the NEET PG admissions of 2025 have been running late and are now stretched up to January 2026. Surprisingly, the regulatory bodies notify the admission deadlines of the programmes towards the last quarter of the calendar year, which makes the situation precarious. This results in the HEIs spending most of their academic session merely completing admissions, leaving them with less time to complete actual teaching activities.
On the academic front, the constant endeavour to fill up seats through multiple rounds of admission counselling calls for making up for the admission delays. The most common practice to manage this loss of time is to compress the duration available for carrying out mandatory teaching-learning-examination activities. Indisputably, the insufficient contact hours for completing academic activities adversely impact the quality of education in that particular admission year and the overall quality of the programme.
Keeping aside the premier public sector HEIs, the admission statistics of public sector HEIs in general reveal a significant number of vacant seats across the country. This is happening even after following the laid-down centralised admission procedure and the additional provision of direct admissions at the institutional level. These vacant seats not only lead to underutilization of physical and human resources in the public education system, but also cause revenue loss to the government. Besides, the incomplete admissions in various programmes are gradually building an opinion unfavourable to public HEIs, while private HEIs thrive due to their timely completion of admissions and related processes.
Without any bias towards either type of HEIs, the reasonable cost of education, better public perception and trust call for public HEIs to complete the admission cycle at the earliest. Public universities and deemed universities ought to prioritise timely admissions and improve their internal processes to match the private sector advantages of speed and scale. The timelines of admissions, examinations, and results in all HEIs should be regulated to be largely uniform.
A closer look into the admission process of public HEIs shows that the centralisation of admission remains a prominent reason for admission delays across the institutions. The advantages envisaged behind having a single admission test to ease the admission process appear to have been diluted in practice. There are various possibilities to overcome these recurring delays—completing admissions to premier public HEIs first, allowing states/HEIs to conduct their own processes independently, creating clusters of HEIs to run separate admission cycles, or significantly shortening the centralised admission timeline.
The ambiguity in the guidelines for admissions, if any, may be resolved, and the admission process should be made student-friendly while allowing the merit-based mobility of students until the last minute. Undoubtedly, the communication regarding admission timelines of public HEIs needs to be made effective to overcome confusion and anxiety among students and parents. Every HEI should focus on attracting the best of talent to their institution, promote healthy competition, and uphold the trust placed in them by students.
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