Archive · 11 Aug 2026
Should India Scrap NEET or Build a NEET 2.0?
In India, students who want to become doctors take a big test called NEET.
Some people are asking whether the country should remove this test or make a new, better version called NEET 2.0.
To prepare for the test, many students go to special coaching centers.
Some even join 'dummy schools,' where their names are on the school list but they do not really go to class.
Instead, they spend their whole teenage years inside coaching centers.
One person in the article says this is happening in Kota and more and more places across India.
They worry that students are missing the normal school life that helps them grow socially and emotionally.
They say the system is focused only on passing the exam, not on becoming a good person.
They believe future doctors need empathy, resilience, and good judgment, not just high marks.
These qualities, they say, cannot be built in a coaching hall.
An article poses the question of whether India should scrap the medical entrance exam NEET or build a new 'NEET 2.0'.
A commentator says 'dummy schools' now exist not just in Kota but increasingly across India.
In these schools, students exist on attendance registers while spending their adolescence inside coaching centres.
The critic argues the system is 'optimising for exam clearance at the cost of human formation'.
The view states doctors need empathy, resilience and judgment as much as marks, which are 'not built in a coaching hall'.
- Who
- Students preparing for India's NEET medical entrance exam, and critics of the coaching-centred preparation system
- What
- A debate over whether India should scrap the NEET medical entrance exam or build a reformed 'NEET 2.0'
- When
- Not specified in the article
- Where
- India, with specific mention of Kota and coaching centres across the country
- Why
- Because critics argue the current system relies on 'dummy schools' and coaching centres that prioritise exam clearance over students' social and emotional development
Scrap NEET
Build NEET 2.0
Future of the medical entrance exam
Scrap NEET
The current NEET system is so flawed that it produces 'dummy schools' and coaching halls which strip students of normal social and emotional development, so the exam should be scrapped.
Build NEET 2.0
Rather than removing the exam entirely, India should reform it into a 'NEET 2.0' that keeps a standardised medical entrance test while addressing the system's problems.
- Exam in question
- NEET (medical entrance exam)
- Proposed alternative
- NEET 2.0
- Core question
- Scrap the exam or build NEET 2.0
- Main concern
- 'Dummy schools' where students are on attendance registers but study in coaching centres
- Locations affected
- Kota and increasingly across India
- Stated trade-off
- Exam clearance vs. human formation
- Qualities said to be needed by doctors
- Empathy, resilience, judgment, marks