The University Grants Commission has notified a draft, Establishment and Operationalization of Academic Banks of Credits (ABC) Scheme in Higher Education, 2021. Earlier, the UGC had constituted a high-level committee to develop a detailed scheme along with the implementation strategy on this innovative concept of the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) that will benefit and facilitate student’s mobility across the system. The implementation of ABC shall provide a significant independence to the students in terms of choosing courses for a programme of study, flexibility in curriculums and also engaging career options across a large number of higher education disciplines/ institutions.
OBJECTIVES OF THE SCHEME
Before knowing what the objectives of the scheme are, let’s see what ABC is all about? ABC as envisioned in the National Educational Policy-2020 shall be a national-level facility promoting flexibility of curriculum framework along with other multidisciplinary mobility of students across the Higher Education Institutions in the country with appropriate credit transfer mechanism created through these regulations. This mechanism shall benefit and facilitate students to choose their own learning path to attain a Degree whether a diploma or a pg-diploma working on the principle of multiple entry- exit levels anytime, anywhere. Some of the objectives of the scheme are:
· To encourage students in selecting the best courses or combination of subjects of their choices to fill in their knowledge and aptitude thirst and desire.
· To motivate students to choose a pace for their studies along with the associated cost and logistics.
· To allow students to tailor their degrees by making specific modifications rather than undergoing the rigid, regularly prescribed degree/course of a single university/autonomous college.
· To support the teaching-learning activities to happen in a distributed or blended manner through integration across various educational institutes and campuses with increased mobility.
· To satisfy the student’s urge for knowledge, freedom to choose and change their academic directions helping them to connect to various domains in order to acquire the right kind of foundations and building blocks of their dreams.
By Tunisha Banerjee
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