UGC Must Not Rush into a Rash Reform





The University Grants Commission's (UGC) rendition of a Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS) limits choice and, unless modified drastically , threatens to throttle academic innovation and excellence in the country . CBCS requires students to complete a certain number of hours of academic work, tallied in credits, to qualify for a degree. For a subject honours degree, the university identifies compulsory core courses, accounting for a portion of the credits, with the balance to be earned from an assortment of disciplines, related to the honours degree subject or otherwise. This much is welcome.However, the UGC takes it a step further: in the name of interuniversity mobility via transferring credits, it seeks to im pose uniformity across universities. The UGC has prepared a model syllabus for each discipline, with core courses and the choices for electives for each subject. This bureaucratic quest for homogeneity ignores the reality that universities, meant to be creators of knowledge, do their work best when its faculty have the freedom and autonomy to pursue excellence in ways they think most suited. Programmes across universities are not meant to be replicas of one another. The freedom to design programmes, allowing for diversity and specialisation, is essential to ensure that universities fulfil their mandate as knowledge creators. Leave individual universities to work out the equivalence of credits sought to be transferred from one to the other.
Policymakers should understand that higher education is not about acquiring skills, but about advancing knowledge.Those who learn to learn by pursuing knowledge under guidance can learn and unlearn skills as required. Those who merely train in specific skills will be left in the lurch when those skills become obsolete.