NTA has earned Rs 3,514 crore from exam fees; income rose 78% after CUET

NEW DELHI : National Testing Agency (NTA) has earned Rs 3,513.98 crore since its establishment in 2018 and spent 87.2% of that, Rs 3,064.77 crore, on holding exams so far, government data shared with parliament on Wednesday shows. NTA’s earnings increased by 78% from Rs 490.35 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 873.20 crore with the introduction of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) in 2022-23.

In response to questions asked by Vivek K Tankha, Rajya Sabha Congress MP from Madhya Pradesh, minister of state (MoS) education, Sukanta Majumdar, said that NTA was established in 2018 and it is “self-supporting through the examination fee” collected from candidates.

Since its inception, NTA has conducted over 240 examinations involving over 5.4 crore candidates.

NTA: Income and expenditure

MoS Majumdar further shared the details of earning and expenditure of NTA since it was established.

NTA income and expenditure over 6 years

*estimates

Except for 2018-19, NTA has consistently maintained a positive net balance each year.

The highest net balance was in 2022-23 with the agency making Rs 191.68 crore when it conducted CUET for the first time.

There has been a substantial increase in NTA’s income through exam fees from 2022. While NTA’s earnings increased by 78% from Rs 490.35 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 873.20 crore, it further increased 22% to Rs 1,065.38 crore in 2023-24 compared to previous year. The earning of coaching centres also grew 53.26 % to 4,667.03 crore in 2022-23 compared to Rs 3,045.12 crore in 2021-22.

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NTA exams

Even though NTA conducted CUET-UG for the third time in 2024, there have been irregularities and teachers raised concerns over delay in academic sessions caused due to late result declaration by the agency. NTA conducted CUET UG 2024 in May but announced the CUET results in the last week of July following a retest of 1,203 candidates .

NTA conducts the three biggest college entrance examinations – CUET-UG; National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET UG) for medicine; and the Joint Entrance Examination Main (JEE Main) for engineering.

CUET-UG is conducted for admission to undergraduate programmes in central universities as well as a handful of private, state and deemed universities. In 2024, the number of candidates for CUET UG stood at 13,47,820; for the NEET exam, 24,06,079; and for JEE Main, 14,76,557.

NTA members

NTA has been set up as a self-sustaining organisation, headed by a director general, appointed by the union government under the central staffing scheme.

In addition, there are 22 employees working on deputation in NTA. The exam body has 39 contractual employees and 132 outsourced staff or employees.

From amongst the employees working on deputation, the percentage of women is 17.3% and that of SCs is 13%.

One employee has been absorbed into NTA from its parent department – the department of higher education, ministry of education.

In June, Pradeep Singh Kharola was appointed as the director general of the NTA.