An ABC to script your own education

By Sandeep Sancheti
CHENNAI: A big dream is what the New Education Policy (NEP), 2020 may look like on the surface, but why should we not dream big? The new policy is neither about big statements nor just about the numbers with which the country should crowd the portals of higher education. Rather, it is a vision of how education systems should evolve with the times.
Beginning from when one is a toddler, it takes one through multiple phases by creating several support systems that can facilitate increased enrolment, enable diversity, enhance quality, promote autonomy and provide better budgetary provisions for sustainability.But the bottom line is that the NEP is envisioned as student-centric. In a simple realisation, changes happening in the technological world are so fast that education cannot be anchored in the past with only regulatory, institutional or teacher centricity. The need of the hour is of learner centricity with a push towards the future.
Education cannot be confined to academic institutions alone; rather, it should have a fusion of inputs from industry, society and government along with what is imparted by way of lecture classes, tutorials and laboratory sessions. At the same time, it is also critical that this four-way arrangement is structured in such a way that the deliverables and choices are essentially left to the student to be able to manoeuvre through his/her own educational journey. At present, institutions dealing with heterogeneous sets of students find it difficult to deliver the desired goods in any single fixed academic scheme to satisfy everyone’s interest. Hence, finding a new way to offer choices to students so that they are able to chart their own journey, based on their chosen destinations, is a great leap that NEP has brought about. The new policy provides the framework of achieving the right fusion between search for a dream and pursuit of one’s intellectual passion. This is where the NEP has formally laid the foundation of an important initiative the ‘Academic Bank of Credit’ or the ABC of an evolving framework, which is being discussed within the academic fraternity.
To promote quality education of overall relevance to all stakeholders, administrators and policy makers have come to realise that academics and research have become highly multi-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary. In this knowledge-driven world, with fast evolution of areas like artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning and Internet of Things, education need not necessarily be pegged to specialisation in one or two subjects, but should follow a homogeneous approach. For instance, a student who has a dream of being an electronics engineer and has a passion for music or economics would not have to sacrifice one for the other. To tailor a degree or its constituents, control must be in the hands of students and not with academic administrators, affiliating universities or regulators and government agencies. Likewise the ABC would also have to give the option of multiple points of entry and exit along with flexibility of credits and time to earn them. A student entering a three or four year college/university programme would have the freedom and luxury to leave after one year with a certificate, after two years with a diploma and three/four years with a degree, for example. In future, the scheme can be evolved further for programmes at master and doctoral levels with exit options like PG diplomas.
The student-centric ABC would be ideal for many who at present feel a deprivation in academic freedom or the inability to juggle between courses and credits along with a desire to dabble with different institutions. The suggestions that are being talked about with the ABC are based on a student’s ability and interest which can lead to an academic programme duration to be longer or shorter; credits from multiple and different institutions including those from foreign; and multi-disciplinary credits. But at the end of it all, a student can have customisation by way of a regular degree or a new generational degree of Bachelors in Liberal Education (see illustration).
Eventually, ABC will pave the way for new avenues on the lines of the GPS (Global Positioning System) that not merely maps a journey, but also puts out the details of alternatives routes, possible bottlenecks, costs and the time, to mention a few. The evolution of ABC is likely to seed a new tool akin to GPS, which may be coined as SPG or ‘Student Personal Guidance’ system.
With this, a young mind has the chance to see through various academic combinations and use what is available by way of academic credits to chart a journey leading to his/her final and chosen destination. Hence, the ABC within the confines of the NEP 2020 is not just about a pedestrian scheme in a prescribed time frame or in a rigid academic format but about young minds being able to free their wings to fly high and flag their dreams with passion.
(This article is authored by Sandeep Sancheti, vice-chancellor of SRMIST Chennai and former president of Association of Indian Universities, New Delhi)