Dr. D. Mukhopadhyay
Education is manifestation of consciousness of mankind. Education makes a man rationale thinker and civilized being in the society. On obtaining proper education, a man prospers in his life, then the society and ultimately the nation at large becomes beneficiary. Education is the bridge between the teacher and the society. There has been remarkable change in education delivery system during last two decades or more in the developed countries keeping in view the necessity of time and development of science and technology. The role of teacher is taking the place of facilitator and self learning is becoming popular day by day. India is third largest education deliverer in the world and thus she is also putting her best effort to make her education system at par with those who are economically advanced countries.
Quality is the slogan of modern education system and in order to have quality life in society, higher education cannot afford to be general but it has to be competitive in any way. Every rational person might agree with the author of this write up that education is the nectar that helps in bringing about enlightenment and empowerment in a man. Now government of India is very seriously trying to bring about sea-change in higher education delivery system. Traditionally, a student of higher education is given a certain number of subjects which the student concerned has to cover in a period of two to three years and he had no choice whether he or she likes a particular subject or not and the student has no liberty to have a subject of his own choice . Traditionally education delivery system is teacher centric and now it is going to be learner centric. A Teacher has to teach a subject whatever subject a student shall choose in his course. Traditionally there is no room in a course for project work, case study, corporate interaction, internship except in few disciplines. Today innovation is the order of higher education. courses are periodically reviewed by academicians, industry people, alumni and other parties having interest in the concerned discipline. Now the experts are discussing and debating for interdisciplinary approach to education course curriculum. Hardly any discipline other than management is interdisciplinary but now the same is likely to be introduced in all other disciplines. Now Choice based Credit System is coming in the place of traditional curriculum based education system. This would enable to introduce student centric education system. Ministry of Human Resource Development is responsible for policy formulation with respect to new and time honoured education system and the same is implemented and executed by the University Grants Commission. The University Grants commission has already introduced the Choice Based Credit System in which a learner can exercise his/her choice to choose from the prescribed courses which are known as elective, foundation and core subjects or any other subject that would help him or her career. Under Choice Based Credit System, a learner can learn at his or her own and the assessment is made on credit system for the subject chosen by the candidate.
The choice based credit system aims at offering opportunities to learn the subject chosen from prescribed courses and help the student to avail the opportunities to learn beyond the core subjects for overall development and transformation from less knowledgeable to more knowledgeable stage during the same or prescribed duration of a particular programme. Choice Based Credit System may be considered to be the benchmark for our academic institutions against the international level institutions. India has adopted the Choice Based Credit System on the recommendation of the Knowledge Commission as well as as per the Eleventh Five Year plan in order to bring about quality and transformational change in Indian higher education. The Choice Based Credit System is expected to ensure mobility of a student in different institutions of higher education across the globe with the earned credits and have a hearty career in such a subject in which it excels. Under the Choice Based Credit System, a student would pursue three kinds of courses and they are compulsory foundation courses, elective courses and core courses. Here, it is mandatory for a student to have the core subjects every semester and choose electives from the prescribed pool of subjects unrelated to his her own discipline. Under this system a management student can opt for an engineering subject as an elective and vice-versa. The Choice Based Credit System aims at introducing multidisciplinary approach to higher education enabling a student to have strong hold across multiple subjects from a wide range of elective subjects. This is an instrument for establishing uniformity and parity within and across the higher educational institutions both at national and international level of education delivery system.
The unique feature of this system is to offer flexibility to the students to complete the course in which he or she is admitted. Under this system the result at the end of the course result would contain grade instead of marks. The UGC has introduced a 10 point grading system such as Outstanding(O) and it offers 10 points, Excellent(A+)- 9 points, Very Good (A) 8 points, Good(B+)- 7 points, Above Average (B)-6 points, Average(C)-5 points and Pass(P)-4 points. Semester system is a must to operate within Choice Based Credit System of education delivery system. This system is in practice across the globe. It helps self learning, more flexibility, takes into consideration the students choice of subjects and its autonomy, multi- skill development and to grow as a professional. UGC stipulates that each semester would have 90 teaching days and it will be of 15 to 18 weeks. The Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) is a welcome innovation in the history of modern education delivery system. This gives freedom a student to opt any of the courses that are prescribed without any problem in their core stream of study. This is true that Choice Based Credit System is imported from foreign Universities and it generates good result also but it should be made applicable to our system that would will be suitable for us. We should not follow this because our resource constraints are to be kept in view.
Our higher education delivery system is week because one of the reasons is limited resource. We do not have good infrastructure meeting the requirements of the Universities. Research and development are two important terms and they are possible only when there is support of resources. There are needs of robust research on Choice Based Credit System also. Almost every University suffers from lack of financial resources and that is the main reason we cannot undertake more research project. No development in any field is possible unless we invest in research. Universities of developed countries have sufficient fund and private sector companies besides public sector organizations provide and finance the research projects and the governments of those countries are also very bountiful in the context of research since they consider it as a part of Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR). To conclude, Choice Based Credit t System has no alternative and it has to be adopted keeping in view our needs and suitability. Every University should think in the direction of introducing Choice Based Credit System since it is students centric, students friendly and a flexible approach of higher education. This will generate good dividend in near future and Indian higher education shall be at par with those of economically developed countries Universities. Government should encourage the Universities and institutions of higher learning in adopting Choice Based Credit System philosophy in the best interest of nation at large.
(The author is Professor of Management, School of Business, Faculty of Management, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra, J & K)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel