NCrF is a broad & enabling framework for all universities: UGC Chairman

 NEW DELHI: With the University Grants Commission (UGC) releasing the National Credit Framework (NCrF), students and parents from across the country now want to know what it is, what's the need for NCrF and how do students earn credits?

Speaking to IANS, UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar answered all these questions related to the higher education system of the country.

Excerpts from the interview:

IANS: UGC released the National Credit Framework on Monday. What exactly is it?

Kumar: The NCrF is a broad enabling framework for all regulatory organisations and all universities, including institutions of national importance. They will be free to notify their detailed implementation guidelines with flexibility for catering to their academic requirements. It is a meta-framework to seamlessly integrate the credits earned through school education, higher education, and vocational and skill education. This meta-framework consists of three verticals:

 National School Education Qualification Framework (NSEQF)

 National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF)

 National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF)

IANS: What is the need for NCrF?

Kumar: The NEP 2020 emphasises the integration of general academic education and vocational and skill education, providing seamless horizontal and vertical mobility between the two streams for lifelong learning. The NCF provides this mechanism while ensuring equivalence within and between these two education streams.

IANS: What is credit, and how do students earn credits?

Kumar: Credit is the recognition that a learner has completed a prior course of learning, corresponding to a qualification at a given level. Simply put, one credit corresponds to 30 notional learning hours in a year of two semesters. Every semester, a student is required to earn a minimum of 20 credits. A student earns 40 credits in one year, corresponding to 1200 notional learning hours. But students can also earn more than 40 credits in a year.

IANS: NCrF also mentions levels of school education, higher education, and vocational and skill education. What is the meaning of these levels, and how do students progress from one level to another?

Kumar: The entire school education for the first time in India has level assignments. School education is assigned Level 0 to Level 4. When a student completes Class V, the student is placed at Level 1.

After completing middle school (Classes VI to VIII), the student reaches level 2. Completion of high school (Class IX and X) corresponds to level 3, and senior secondary school (Class XI and XII) corresponds to level 4. The credits earned by a student during his entire schooling will be 160 credits.

Higher education levels start at Level 4.5 and end at Level 8. A three-year bachelor's degree will have levels 4.5, 5, and 5.5, corresponding to the first year, second year, and third year. Every year, a student has to earn 40 credits to move to the next level, and by the end of a three-year bachelor's degree, the student will have earned 120 credits. Level 6 corresponds to a 4-year bachelor's degree, Level 6.5 corresponds to a 2-year master's degree for those with a 3-year bachelor's degree, Level 7 corresponds to a 2-year master's degree for those with a 4-year undergraduate engineering degree, and a Ph.D. degree is at level 8. When a student completes a Ph.D., the earned credits would be 8 x 40 = 320.

IANS: What learning modes are permitted in NCrF, and how does one earn credits if the learning methods are different?

Kumar: The credit assignment is a function of the total hours of learning put in by a student in a year versus the full credits available in a year. The learning hours, irrespective of the mode of learning (offline, online, or blended), shall continue to follow the broad principles specified in NCrF. This will enhance the extensive use of technology in education.

IANS: How do students store and redeem the credits earned by them to obtain the corresponding qualifications?

Kumar: The credits accumulated by each student shall be stored in the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) technology platform. ABC enables every student and educational institution to digitally keep a record of all the credits earned and accumulated throughout their lives in a standard account. ABC can be used to store learning irrespective of the type of learning, i.e., academic, vocational, or experiential learning.

IANS: Does it mean that even experiential learning can be credited and used for acquiring qualifications?

Kumar: Yes. NCrF provides the opportunity for creditization and progression pathways for other learnings not credited earlier in awarding a certificate, diploma, or degree, encouraging lifelong learning.

IANS: Can you explain how credits earned in one stream can be used while joining another stream?

Kumar: For example, an ITI passout (2 years after 10th) along with an additional language course from NIOS attains the equivalence of a Class 12 certificate along with an ITI-National Trade Certificate, which will enable the student to join a university like any other 12th pass student.

Similarly, a 5th-grade student with a total of 200 accumulated credit points over the years who is undertaking a particular bridge course is eligible to appear for the 8th-grade examination. Once the student clears it, he will be in 8th grade and can continue with 9th grade onwards through mainstream education.

IANS: Will other countries recognise our NCrF, and will other countries recognise the qualifications of our students?

Kumar: The international equivalence and transfer of credits shall be enabled through various multilateral and bilateral agreements between the respective regulators of the countries concerned.

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