National Credit Framework

Context: The Government developed National Credit Framework (NCrF) to integrate learning on all dimensions i.e., academics, vocational skills and experiential learning including relevant experience and professional levels acquired. The National Credit Framework (NCrF) provides for Assignment, Accumulation, Storage, Transfer & Redemption of Credits through Academic Bank of Credits.

Proposed benefits for various stakeholders are as follows:

1. Students: NCrF will ensure Flexibility in the duration of study/ courses through provisions of multiple entries and exit/work options as well as pave the path for creditisation of all learning hours, including academic, vocational and experiential learning. It will also give the provision for lifelong learning – any time anywhere learning: It will also help students by:

• Establishing multidisciplinary and holistic education with flexible curricula
• Removing the hard distinction between the education stream and making study choices respectful, allowing for more than one award in the same period
• Removing the distinction between arts, science, social sciences, commerce, etc
• Giving student credits for every academic/ skill/ experience
• Enhancing the scope of core learning to include foundational and cognitive both

2. Institutions: NCrF will bring about a unification of higher education institutions to promote multidisciplinary education, creating a diverse and rich students knowledge base. It will also help in:

• Promoting stronger collaboration between institutions
• Making credit mechanism simpler and uniform
• Increasing focus on research and innovation
• Promoting digital learning, blended learning, and open distance learning
• Leveraging the institutional infrastructure

3. Government: NCrF is expected to assist the government to increase the enrolment of students, helping to fulfil the national vision of complementing the demographic dividend and transforming India into the Skill Capital of the World. It will also:

• Making vocational education and training/ skilling aspirational
• Highly educated and trained workforce for Aatmnirbhar Bharat

4. Industry: NCrF will allow students to attain NSQF-approved foundational skills developed by industry and be more employable. The provision of micro-credentials will allow integration of quick educational upgradation/ up-skilling It will also help in:

• Re-Skilling and up-skilling of existing employees/ engineers
• Making students more employable by enabling a more holistic design of the study
• Creating a multi/ cross-sectoral skilled pool of employable youth

Need for Academic Bank of Credit scheme:

India has a long tradition of holistic and multidisciplinary learning, from universities such as Takshashila and Nalanda, to the extensive literatures of India combining subjects across fields. Integrating the humanities and arts with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) improves learning outcomes, creativity, innovation, critical thinking, social awareness and responsibility among the students. National Education policy (2020) also suggested the need for Holistic and multi-disciplinary education to lead India into 21^st century and 4^th Industrial revolution.  

                            However, not every Higher education institution in India can provide such a multidisciplinary education due to shortage of faculty, limited financial resources and lack of institutional autonomy in setting curriculum.

To overcome these challenges, National education policy suggested Academic Bank of credits (ABC) scheme. UGC has recently notified the scheme. 

Academic Bank of credit scheme:

• Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) is a virtual/digital storehouse that contains the information of the credits earned by individual students throughout their academic journey. 
• Academic Bank of Credits shall provide to every student the facility to open unique or individual Academic Bank Account in digital form. When a student pursues any course and clears exams, credits will be automatically awarded to them. Institutions need to fill out the details and upload the deposits in the students’ Academic Credit Bank’s account on the digital portal.
• ABC will allow students of undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses to exit the course and enter within a stipulated period. The student can earn up to 50 per cent credits from outside the college/university where she/he is enrolled for the degree/diploma programme.

Advantages:

• Option to exit and enter: If any student needs to get back to education after a break or has to relocate to another city, they can easily ‘carry’ forward their completed credits.
• Wider choice to students: 
• As multiple institutes are connected to the ABC portal, one can be formally enrolled in university ‘A’ but can choose to do some courses from university ‘B’, some more from university ‘C’ and so on and all of these would count towards the student’s degree.
• Students also can join online courses offered by MOOCs like SWAYAM or NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) and add these credits to my ABC.
• Reduces the burden on institutions: It reduces the burden on any single institute to float an unmanageable number of courses and increases the competition among institutes.

Problems: 

• Grade inflation: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platforms such as SWAYAM and NPTEL are ‘supposedly designed’ for large enrolments. one of the metrics for success of these courses is student performance in the final assessment. Thus, it would be in the interest of course coordinators to award scores liberally and paint a rosy picture.
• Dilution of Quality of degrees:  An average student from premier institute like IIT/IISER may find it tempting to opt out of a challenging course in my institute and use the ABC scheme to replace it with an equivalent course from another
  • university where it would be far easier to obtain good grades.
• Contraction of teaching posts in small institutes: The ABC scheme specifies that students can avail up to 50% of credits from other institutes. students avail these credits outside the parent college, they need not enrol for the corresponding in-house courses. As the number of teaching posts in any higher education institute are calculated on the basis of student enrolment numbers, when a large fraction of students do not enrol for the courses offered by them it might result in co traction of teaching posts in those institutes. 

As a whole, this scheme has all the right and laudable intentions and would probably work well in a society with a more equitable distribution of resources. But in India, where the quality of education varies drastically from one institute to the next, this can lead to unmanageable academic and administrative issues in higher education institutes with brand names, and lead to a contraction in the number of teaching posts in smaller higher education institutes. The UGC must rethink expeditiously how to implement this scheme.