Key meeting of VCs to discuss vexed Choice Based Credit on July 7

The Human Resource Development Ministry has called a crucial meeting of Vice-Chancellors of all central universities on July 7 to discuss the <g data-gr-id="39">roll out</g> of the contentious Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) from the ensuing academic session. “A meeting of all Vice-Chancellors of central universities has been called on July 7, where the progress on CBCS implementation from <g data-gr-id="27">2015-16</g> session will be discussed,” officials in the Ministry said. The officials claimed “most of the universities have put up a mechanism in place to implement the proposed programme and the syllabi is being fine-tuned”. The debate regarding the CBCS is intensifying, with a section of academic fraternity rejecting the proposed reforms in the education system as a “crackdown on varsities’ autonomy”. 

While universities, including Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia and Jawaharlal Nehru University have announced they would adopt the system in the 2015-16 session, their teachers’ bodies are up in arms against the proposal, claiming that the students are being treated as ‘guinea pigs’ for this experiment. Though HRD Minister Smriti Irani had assured members of the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA), during a visit to Hindu college last month, that representatives of teachers’ bodies would be called for the review meeting, officials said, it hasn’t been decided yet whether other stakeholders will be invited for July 7 meet.  

The University Grants Commission (UGC), on the other hand, has asserted that the programme will not “suppress” the academic liberal environment of universities or lead to inter-college transfer of teachers. Dismissing such contention, the commission has said that “nothing contrary has been suggested in the template of the syllabi so designed by the experts” and has offered to let the universities deviate 30% from a common syllabus it has laid down, improving on an offer of 20 <g data-gr-id="16">per cent</g> made earlier. Calling it a “cafeteria approach” UGC had in September last year asked all central universities to implement CBCS from the ensuing academic session, following a meeting of its VCs”.