CBCS won't suppress liberal environment of universities: UGC

The introduction of the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) would not "in any way" hamper the academic liberal environment of the universities, the University Grants Commission (UGC) said on Thursday.

The UGC has made guidelines for CBCS effective implementation which "per se provide a template to the universities to design the CBCS according to their strength while keeping the overall uniformity amongst the universities".

The ministry of human resource development in a statement said the commission in order to ensure fairness in assessment and evaluation has also given a template of procedures to be followed so that the standards of education are equally maintained.

Numerous communications have been sent to vice chancellors (VCs) of all universities for effective implementation of the system.

Eight workshop have been held all over India, in which vice chancellors of all central, state and private universities participated.

"The VCs of central universities, in the conference held in February, have given their commitment to the visitor to implement the same from the academic year 2015-16," it said.

"This system is already in vogue in numerous private universities and this is an endeavour of the government to bring state and central universities at par with international standards so that the pass outs of these universities are not at any disadvantage in comparison to the private universities," it added.

The ministry said, to handhold the universities, the UGC embarked on an extensive exercise of designing curricula for undergraduate course which would assimilate with the provisions of CBCS.

"The syllabi by the experts have been put in the public domain for feedback and for subsequent modification before they are finalised. The syllabi so finalised will give leverage to the universities to modify the same to the extent of 30 percent (likely to be enhanced from 20 percent after feedback) depending upon their areas of specialisation," it said.

It added that it wasn't a deviation from the earlier practice where inter-university migration required a minimum 70 percent equivalency as such implying that the syllabi all over India in undergraduate level are similar to the extent of 70 percent.

"Under the CBCS system the elective subjects so offered will only be from the subjects which are available in the universities. As such the teaching load of the teachers is not likely to increase beyond the norms stipulated by UGC. Also there will be no inter-institute/inter-college migration transfer of teachers," it said.

It also said CBCS would also will not suppress the academic liberal environment of the university "as nothing contrary has been suggested in the template of the syllabi so designed by the experts".

The governments wants to implement CBCS in this academic session with an aim to facilitate student mobility across institutions.