University Grants Commission Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar said the recently released National Credit Framework (NCrF) would function as a broad enabling framework for all regulatory organisations and universities, including institutions of national importance.
He said institutions would 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 such as National School Education Qualification Framework (NSEQF), National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF) and National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF),” Mr. Kumar said.
He said the National Education Policy (NEP) put emphasis on the integration of general academic education and vocational and skill education, which would provide seamless horizontal and vertical mobility between the two streams for lifelong learning.
“NCrF provides this mechanism while ensuring equivalence within and between these two education streams,” he said.
Under the system, 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 1,200 notional learning hours. But students can also earn more than 40 credits in a year,” he added.
The credits earned by a student during the entire schooling period will be 160 credits. Higher education levels start from 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 course, the student will have earned 120 credits.
“Level 6 corresponds to four-year bachelor’s degree, Level 6.5 corresponds to a two-year Master’s degree for those with a three years bachelor’s degree, and Level 7 corresponds to a two-year master’s degree for those with a four-year undergraduate engineering degree and Ph.D. degree is at level 8. When a student completes a Ph.D., the earned credits would be 8x40 = 320,” he added.
Published - April 12, 2023 09:46 pm IST
