The University Grants Commission (UGC) has published a draft regulation for the Academic Credit Bank (ABC), an initiative to facilitate student loan transfers that allow them to move between courses and institutions of higher education. Academic credit banking was an important proposal in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The UGC has given until February 5 to send comments.
The draft regulation says that it aims to promote the flexibility of the program framework and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary academic mobility of students between institutions in the country with an appropriate “referral mechanism”. According to the draft regulation entitled “UGC (Establishment and Operation of the Academic Credit Bank (ABC) in Higher Education), 2021”), students can choose their own learning path to obtain a diploma and many choose Multiple input / output option.
According to the draft regulation, the ABC will be an “online credit database business” for higher education institutions, following the model of the National Academic Deposit. The UGC regulation states: “ABC is a financial grade academic type commercial bank with student account holders to whom ABC is designed to provide a variety of services including credit checking, credit accumulation, transfer or redemption and authentication of diplomas.
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“Credit banking aims to empower students by offering” a wide selection of courses for a program of study, program flexibility, and interdisciplinary course options. The goal of the ABC will be to provide students with the opportunity of choosing a pace for their studies, as well as the logistics and costs involved. “This” will allow students to customize their degrees or make specific modifications / specializations instead of following the rigid and regularly prescribed degrees / courses from a single university / autonomous college “, states the UGC project.
