The Centre’s decision to introduce the system of Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) is intended to promote trade and commercialisation in the higher education sector, according to Rajan Gurukkal, Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council.
As per the notification by the University Grants Commission (UGC), the ABC will enable students to avail multiple entry and exit options in higher education institutions and opt for a tailor-made degree, besides permitting multiple entry and exit in academic programmes.
“It will make higher education all the more shallow, shoddy, dubious and corrupt. In the absence of common criteria and standards of assessment, credit transfer will be highly disadvantageous to students,” Prof. Gurukkal told The Hindu.
“Higher education institutions being classified into good and bad through grading and ranking, academic credit values will be exactly like the value differentiation across international currency. Even between European universities and American universities the credit exchange value difference is 2=1 and hence nothing to talk about the credit value of Indian universities,” he said.
Prof. Gurukkal said that promotion and optimisation of aptitude oriented higher education through the facilitation of multidisciplinary, and holistic education is the rhetoric used to legitimise the scheme.
“It is part of the new system of anytime learning, anywhere learning, and any level learning, very flexible and totally free of rigid restrictions of institutions. Also, it enables multiple entry and exit in higher education. The system introduces skills into the credit-based system and makes all academic programmes vocationally relevant. Its aim is to let most students be free in choosing what to learn, when, where and gain skills for employment,” he said.
Prof. Gurukkal said that the system is meant to facilitate global as well as national mobility of students as freelancers doing courses and shopping credits from university to university.
“They can deposit these credits in the ABC and have accumulation, transfer, and redemption of their credits by the opening, closure and validation of their academic bank accounts,” he said.