Whats haunting the education sector? The news of brewing turmoil surfaced in the capital reporting demands for rollback of Choice Based Credit System, along with protests to repeal the Central Universities Bill 2013. The angry academicians from state and central Universities are protesting against these policies, clauses and systems of the government as they feel they encourage the treatment of education as a ‘no-merit good’, which also in turns encourages the initiatives to promote private players in the education sector. Let us briefly look at the concept of CBCS and the opposition it garners.
CHOICE BASED CREDIT SYSTEM
The apex body for higher education, the University Grants Commission adopted the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) recently and one of the first institutions to adopt it was the Delhi University. The UGC’s adoption guidelines state, “the choice based credit system provides a ‘cafeteria’ approach in which the students can take courses of their choice, learn at their own pace, undergo additional courses, and acquire more than the required credits.” This new system comes after the introduction of the 4 year long undergraduate program policy. Though the system allows for students to select courses of their personal choice, the UGC guidelines for the CBCS also lay emphasis on how such a system would make quality of education better and more desirable, while the view on that remains divided to a large extent.
The hurried implementation of the four year undergraduate programs at DU was a cause for grave concern and now the concern over CBCS seems to bring to light the divided opinion among institution administration and the designated academicians. Nandita Narain, DUTA president expressed her opinion on the implementation of CBCS, “Choice Based Credit System came to DU titled as FYUP; CBCS is exactly like FYUP. FYUP has been an absolute disaster for the students. The UGC letter can be seen flaunting that the semester system has been a great success, but the reality is that it has been a great failure”. The CBCS is widely used globally but in India it comes along with funding issues, hierarchical niches to be addressed and a truckload of confusion and issues in terms of appearing hastily implemented without much though to the fraternity, the competency of teachers and student crowd.
GUIDELINES PDF – http://www.du.ac.in/du/uploads/Guidelines/UGC_credit_Guidelines.pdf
