Choice Based Credit System

Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) allows the students to choose courses from the prescribed courses comprising core, elective/minor or skill based courses. The courses will be evaluated by following the grading system, which is regarded to be better than the conventional marks system. CBCS seeks to abolish marks-based evaluation in all universities. These guidelines are applicable to all undergraduate and postgraduate level degree, diploma and certificate programmes run by Central, State and deemed universities in India.

Why there is a need for CBCS?

• It becomes necessary to introduce uniform grading system in the entire higher education in India.
• CBCS becomes necessary in order to bring uniformity in evaluation system and computation of the Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) based on student’s performance in examinations.

Salient features of CBCS

• There will be three main courses: Core, Elective and Ability Enhancement courses.
  • Core Course: A course, which has to be compulsorily studied by a candidate
  • Elective Course: A course which a student can be choose from a pool of courses, which may be very specific/specialized/advanced/supportive to the discipline/ subject of study or which enables an exposure to some other discipline/subject/domain.
  • Ability Enhancement Course: These are of two kinds:
    • Ability Enhancement Compulsory Courses (AECC): it is based upon the content that leads to knowledge enhancement.
    • Skill Enhancement Courses (SEC): value-based and/or skill-based. It aims in providing hands-on-training, competencies, skills etc.
  • It introduces Research Component in under graduate courses.
  • Number of core papers for all Universities will be same for both UG Honors as well as UG Program.
  • It adopts Credit and Grading System of Evaluation. UGC has recommended a 10 point grading system:
    • (Outstanding): 10
    • A+ (Excellent): 9
    • A (Very Good): 8
    • B+ (Good): 7
    • B (Above Average): 6
    • C (Average): 5
    • P (Pass): 4
    • F (Fail): 0
    • Ab (Absent): 0
  • Each course is assigned a certain credit. When the student passes a particular course, he/she earns the credits which are earmarked for that course. The students earn credits according to their pace of study.
  • It has reduced the existence of wide disparity among discipline wise enrolment.

What are the other global grading systems?

Major higher education institutions across the world are implementing a system of credits. Examples are:

• European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) in Europe.
• National Qualifications Framework in Australia.
• Pan-Canadian Protocol on the Transferability of University Credits in Canada.
• Credit Accumulation and Transfer System (CATS) in UK.

Advantages of CBCS according to the UGC

• This will enable the students to move across institutions within India and across countries.
• The uniform grading system will help the potential employers to assess the performance of the candidates.
• It follows the student centric approach rather than the teacher-centric.
• Student can undertake as many credits as they can cope with. Also, in this system if the students fail in one/more courses, it is not necessary for them to repeat all courses in a given semester.
• CBCS provides more flexibility for students by enabling them to choose inter-disciplinary, intra-disciplinary courses, skill oriented papers as per their learning needs, interests and aptitude.
• CBCS will make education broad-based and at par with global standards. It enables students to take credits by combining unique combinations. For example, Physics with Economics, Microbiology with Chemistry or Environment Science etc.
• CBCS offers more flexibility to the students and allows them to study at different times and at different institutions to complete one course. Credits earned at one institution are transferrable.
• It provides enhanced learning opportunities.

Criticisms

• There will be difficulty in estimating the exact marks.
• There will be fluctuation in the workload of teachers.
• The implementation of CBCS needs good infrastructure for effective dissemination of education.
• It is feared that the homogenization under CBCS will do grave in injustice to India’s vast diversity.
• It tends to curb the autonomy of universities and has implications with respect to the quality of education.
• It is likely to kill specialization across different fields as all would follow the same beaten track.
• Most of the universities have abysmal infrastructure in terms of material or human resources.
• It gives an all-India scale for conversion of marks into grades and the system disregards the fact that there exist radical differences between the “standard” maintained in different colleges and universities.
• The CBCS has imposed uniform syllabi on universities. The universities are permitted to effect only minimal changes. Teachers will not have any role in designing the courses they teach.
• As opposed to uniform excellence, the CBCS tends to promote uniform mediocrity and a lowering of academic standards.
• It may lead to lack of recognition to academic work and demoralization of professors.