Jadavpur: Some of the most celebrated teachers associated with Jadavpur University on Tuesday opposed the decision to involve "external experts" in the university's undergraduate admission tests and wondered whether the government was trying to "decimate" a time-tested system.

"If the state government wants to decimate a system the state's best university has been following, and doing well, they have to explain the reasons... why they want to decimate it. Let them explain what good will come out of it," emeritus professor Sukanta Chaudhuri said after a meeting of the admissions committee.

"The report about JU (its academic achievements) is sent to the state government each year. I don't know whether they even go through the report. Can they assure us that the new system they are proposing would be on a par with what we already have? Can they guarantee the new system would be able to maintain the standard of excellence?"

The admissions committee had last week decided to engage external experts to set one of two sets of admission test question papers and possibly evaluate the answer scripts. The move came in deference to an advice from Bengal's advocate-general Kishore Dutta.

Tuesday's meeting was supposed to formally ratify last week's decision but that did not happen. The meeting could not reach a consensus.

The admission tests in the six humanities departments are scheduled to take place from July 11 to 14. Admissions to some of the other departments are decided entirely on the basis of marks scored at the Plus II level.

Several past and present teachers, including Sankha Ghosh, Supriya Chaudhuri and Nabaneeta Dev Sen, signed a statement that expressed the fear that Jadavpur University's pride could be "ground to dust" because of the decision.

"We are deeply concerned about the controversy and uncertainty surrounding the entrance exam. It does not remain to be said that the teachers of a curriculum are the best judges of the abilities of prospective students. The logic is more applicable in this case because these departments in Jadavpur University have been selecting the students through a time-tested process for several years, perhaps decades.... Scrapping this successful system without any reason and replacing it with another is bound to severely affect the evaluation of merit....

"Despite many challenges, the merit of students in Bengal and their academic prowess was a matter of pride. That pride could now be ground to dust....

"In this context, we strongly condemn this unwarranted assault on academic activities of one of the best universities of the state...."

Supriya Chaudhuri later explained the case for continuing with the time-tested system.

"These days in the Plus-II board exams, students end up notching up high scores even in the humanities. This is possible because more objective or short-answer questions are set at the school-leaving exams. But we need to test the writing skill of the prospective students to determine whether a student is worthy of studying the humanities. We have been successfully doing this. Where is the need to engage the external experts in this exercise?" she asked.

Sukanta Chaudhuri said the government did not believe in letting any good mechanism to be introduced or thrive. He cited the scrapping of a proposed centralised online undergraduate admission system in colleges. "You can recall how they had scrapped the centralised online admission which was almost ready to be introduced in 2014. The system was never revived," he said.

As the admissions committee could not ratify on Tuesday last week's decision, the university's executive council will meet on Wednesday to take a call, said acting registrar Chiranjeeb Bhattacharya.