Choice Based Credit System

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has initiated several measures to bring equity, efficiency and excellence in the Higher Education System of country. The important measures taken to enhance academic standards and quality in higher education include innovation and improvements in curriculum, teaching-learning process, examination and evaluation systems, besides governance and other matters.

The UGC has formulated various regulations and guidelines from time to time to improve the higher education system and maintain minimum standards and quality across the Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in India. The academic reforms recommended by the UGC in the recent past have led to overall improvement in the higher education system. However, due to lot of diversity in the system of higher education, there are multiple approaches followed by universities towards examination, evaluation and grading system. While the HEIs must have the flexibility and freedom in designing the examination and evaluation methods that best fits the the curriculum, syllabi and teaching–learning methods, there is a need to devise a sensible system for awarding the grades based on the performance of students. Presently the performance of the students is reported using the conventional system of marks secured in the examinations or grades or both. The conversion from marks to letter grades and the letter grades used vary widely across the HEIs in the country. This creates difficulty for the acadamia and the employers to understand and infer the performance of the students graduating from different universities and colleges based on grades.

UGC guideline provides types of Courses in a programme. These may be of three kinds: Core, Elective and Foundation. Details of thee are as follows:

• Core Course:-

  There may be a Core Course in every semester. This is the course which is to be compulsorily studied by a student as a core requirement to complete the requirement of a programme in a said discipline of study.

• Elective Course:-

  Elective course is a course which can be chosen from a pool of papers. It may be: Supportive to the discipline of study

  1. Providing an expanded scope
  2. Enabling an exposure to some other discipline/domain
  3. Nurturing student’s proficiency/skill.
  4. An elective may be "Generic Elective" focusing on those courses which add generic proficiency to the students. An elective may be "Discipline centric" or may be chosen from an unrelated discipline. It may be called an "Open Elective."

• Foundation Course:-

  The Foundation Courses may be of two kinds: Compulsory Foundation and Elective foundation. “Compulsory Foundation” courses are the courses based upon the content that leads to Knowledge enhancement. They are mandatory for all disciplines. Elective Foundation courses are value-based and are aimed at man-making education.

CBCS Committee