At most of India's private engineering and medical schools, a certain number of spots in the freshman class — usually about 15% — are reserved for the college's management to allocate at its discretion. (Most public universities do not use the management quota system.) In theory, that could mean awarding seats to underprivileged students. But in practice, it usually means selling those seats.
Years ago, one of the Regents of the University of California admitted to the press during the Bakke controversy that even aside from the ethnic and women's admissions, ten percent of the professional school slots were at the discretion of the Regents i.e., friends, families, politicians etc. The Regents stomped on him for that. So even the so-called taxpayer funded schools have limited 'true' meritocracy, the fix is ALWAYS in.
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Mehrotra, the former consultant, says the overall quality of education is hurt when 15% of students in the classroom may not have achieved sufficiently high test scores to get there in the first place. They bring down the standards and may have difficulty finding jobs after graduation, he says.
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https://www.npr.org/2019/08/04/745182272/when-students-in-india-cant-earn-college-admission-on-merit-they-buy-their-way-i