Universities should be allowed to set their own benchmarks for admission of students and decide the weightage they would give to the Common Entrance Test (CET) that Bengal is planning to start, Trinamul MP and Harvard University professor Sugata Bose said on Tuesday.

Bose, who is also the chief mentor of Presidency University, said universities could do without what the government was trying to introduce.

"I don't know what the West Bengal State Council of Higher Education Bill, 2015, contains. But going by what has been reported, I would say universities or any centre of excellence should be allowed to decide how it is going to admit students at the postgraduate level," he told Metro.

The bill, passed in the Assembly on Monday, seeks to determine eligibility for admission to postgraduate courses.

The bill also empowers the state government to create a pool of applicants for postgraduate courses, be it at Presidency or institutions like Gourbanga University in Malda or Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University in Purulia.

Bose said master's and PhD admissions should be left to the universities, as is the norm in institutions that draw the best students.

Harvard, Princeton and Yale give less weightage to the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) - a standardised test that is an admission requirement for institutes in the US - and focus on criteria such as "Statement of Purpose", "Sample Writing" and "Referee" while admitting students.

"It is assumed that everybody would do reasonably well in GRE. Therefore, other parameters are factored in to draw the brightest of students. Harvard University even flies in students to showcase what it has and why they should opt for Harvard over others," Bose said.

He made out a case for decentralising postgraduate admissions across universities to the greatest extent possible.

In support of his point, Bose referred to what he had written about the Common Entrance Test in the Presidency mentor group's third report to chief minister Mamata Banerjee in 2013.

"If such a test (Common Entrance Test) is meant to be similar to the GRE in the United States and its scores are to be taken to be just one of many criteria to be considered in the admission process, then it may well be acceptable. However, over-centralisation of postgraduate admission across universities should be avoided. Every university should have autonomy in determining its own admissions process and deciding on its admissions list. Presidency University, as a unique institution and centre of excellence, must be free to have its own admission test and interviews," he had written.

Sources in the higher education department said the government planned to give 60 per cent weightage to the Common Entrance Test and 40 per cent to scores in the Part III undergraduate exams. The idea is to create a common pool of postgraduate applicants.

Bose advocated flexibility. "The universities should be free to decide whether they want to give six per cent or 60 per cent weightage."