Choice Based Credit System Not to Hamper Academic Liberty, Clarifies UGC

The UGC has clarified that the introduction of Choice Based Credit System will not in any way hamper the academic liberal environment of the universities, despite rumblings from several institutions and universities in the country.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has been trying to introduce the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) for quite some time and guidelines have been framed for its effective implementation, which were uploaded in the month of November, 2014. The guidelines per se provide a template to the universities to design the CBCS according to their strength while keeping the overall uniformity among the universities, said the UGC.

The UGC said to keep fairness in assessment and evaluation, it has also given template of procedures to be followed so that the standards of education are equally maintained. Numerous communications have been sent to the Vice-Chancellors (VCs) of all Universities for effective implementation of the system, said UGC refuting allegations made by some varsities on the issue.

Eight Workshops have been held all over India in which VCs of all Central, State and Private Universities participated and the Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities, in the Conference held in February 2015, have given their commitment to the Visitor to implement the same from the academic year 2015-16, said the statement.

This system is already in vogue in some private universities and the new endeavour will bring State Universities and Central Universities at par with international standards so that the pass outs of these universities are not at any disadvantage in comparison to the private universities. It may be noted that none of the Indian universities rank within 100 in Times Higher Education Ranks in the world.

To handhold the Universities, UGCsaid it has embarked on an extensive exercise of designing curricula for undergraduate course which would assimilate with the provisions of CBCS. The syllabi by the experts have been put in the public domain for feedback and for subsequent modification before they are finalised.

The syllabi, once finalised, will give leverage to the universities to modify the same to the extent of 30%, which will be enhanced from 20% after feedback,  depending upon their areas of specialisation.

The UGC has clarified that this is not deviation from the earlier practice where inter-university migration required a minimum 70% equivalency as such implying that the syllabi all over India in undergraduate level are similar to the extent of 70%.

Under the CBCS system the elective subjects so offered will only be from the subjects which are available in the Universities or Institutes and it will not add the teaching load of the teachers beyond the norms stipulated by UGC.

Also there will be no inter-institute/inter-college migration or transfer of teachers and the UGC said it will not suppress the academic liberal environment of the university as nothing contrary has been suggested in the template of the syllabi so designed by the experts.