Academic Bank of Credit a panacea for the higher education system?

Critics argue it is part of the larger design to promote privatisation of higher education and online education to reduce the government's expenditure

Last week, as the New Education Policy-2020, or NEP, marked a year of its implementation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Academic Bank of Credit (ABC). The initiative has the potential to internationalise India's higher education system. Such academic credit banks are already functional in many developed countries like Canada, the UK and South Korea. The University Grants Commission (UGC) first mooted the idea in 2019 and later adopted it in the NEP-2020 after discussions.

The ABC is now a gazette notified regulation. Institutions need to agree to join it, and the UGC has communicated this to vice-chancellors. It is an online virtual space provided to students to deposit and accumulate the credits they earn during their courses offered by Indian universities.

As a student-centric initiative, the ABC offers a learning-friendly approach that can ensure multi-disciplinary holistic education. It aims to create a national-level facility to provide flexibility of curriculum framework and interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary academic mobility of students across higher education institutions with appropriate credit transfer mechanisms to earn a degree or diploma.

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The regulation offers four major promises: a) freedom and flexibility in the university degree-granting system, b) standardisation within the Indian higher education system, c) robust integration of the Indian higher education system, and d) a move towards internationalisation of Indian higher education.

Freedom and flexibility in degree-granting have been issues in higher education due to the rigidity in the process, which causes year loss and semester loss to students who have to leave the university system in between their courses, whether because of financial reasons or transferable jobs of their parents. Now with the ABC, students may accumulate credits, and once they acquire requisite credits, they can be granted degrees provided those required credits are earned within seven years of joining the course.

This regulation enables students to select the best courses or combinations that suit their aptitude and quest for knowledge. Such choices will be more friendly to students considering associated logistics and cost of the course opted. The ABC can allow students to tailor their degrees or make specific modifications and specifications rather than undergoing the rigid, regularly prescribed degree or courses of a single university or autonomous college. It can be achieved through multiple entries and exits for the student to complete their degree to suit their time preferences by providing mobility across various higher education institutions. With freedom of mobility, the ABC will help decrease dropouts and increase the gross enrolment ratio in higher education.

The enhanced gross enrolment in higher education will move India towards developed nations, help attain the sustainable development goals of education, and fulfil our commitment to UN resolutions as a responsible nation.

Education is a subject in the Concurrent List. The Indian education system is diverse. We have central universities funded by the Union government, state universities funded by respective states with partial or no support from the UGC and private universities governed and funded by private groups but follow UGC regulations for awarding degrees.

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In such a situation, the degree-granting mechanism and credit carrying system varies from state to state and also from university to university. Students who move from one part to another part of the country, due to any reason, face problems. The ABC would reduce such disparity among institutions through standardisation of crediting system and promote uniformity in the degree-granting mechanism. This will also reduce the pedagogical gap that exists within higher education institutions of India.

Integrating higher educational institutions is the need of the day as we move in a globalised educational space. Many universities still have decades-old curriculum, obsolete readings and old evaluation and degree-granting mechanisms. After joining the Academic Bank of Credit, all higher education institutions need to restructure their curriculum and readings and update this process better. The ABC will provide a unique opportunity to higher education institutions to integrate themselves to generate a robust system that can handle millions of students who may join the varsity system in the coming years. Such integration will benefit students in getting standardised, updated and epistemologically globalised knowledge.

The Academic Bank of Credit is a move towards the internationalisation of our higher education system and making our institutions more global. European credit transfer and accumulation system suggests that it has made European higher education more transparent and helped students move between countries and have their academic qualifications and study periods recognised by institutions abroad. Similarly, the South Korean academic credit bank system claims that it allows students to earn a degree by combining different sources. It is helpful for a student deterred from finishing by the difficulty in registering in a new institution with the risk of needing to repeat classes. We can learn similar experiences from Canadian and American institutions.

So, in a global environment where nations are moving closer for knowledge sharing and innovation, India cannot remain isolated by following a rigid system of granting degrees. Through its clauses, the ABC regulation can standardise our higher education up to the international level if institutions choose to join.

However, like previous regulations of the UGC, the ABC has its pros and cons. As only the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) graded institutions are mandated to join the Academic Bank of Credit, it will further create a hierarchy between institutions. Merely the top few hundred institutions are in this scheme, for now, so it may push the already remote institutions to become more marginalised. Hopefully, trickle-down may work, and the left out institutions will also participate eventually in the ABC.

How state and central institutions will join together is an issue that needs addressing since different political parties of opposite political persuasions run the state governments. For example, how would Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal's institutions join together if the two states do not restructure their educational policies?

Despite the flexibility, 50 per cent of credit is to be earned from the registering institutions. The restriction will be a hindrance as it is up to the institution to join the ABC or not. If premier institutions, like the Delhi University or Jawaharlal Nehru University, do not participate due to their size and structure, the ABC may fail to achieve its objectives.

Critics have argued that we are paving the road for the entry of foreign universities into our higher education system. They contend the Academic Bank of Credit is part of the larger design to promote privatisation of higher education and online education to reduce the government's expenditure on public-funded liberal education.

However, critics should further study the ABC. It can potentially be a game-changer in the Indian higher education system, which is lagging in terms of quality, accessibility, affordability, and equity compared to many developed and developing countries.

(The writer teaches political science at Zakir Husain College, Delhi University)