UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar revealed on Thursday that over two crore students have enrolled on the Academic Bank of Credits portal. He was speaking at the Western Zone vice chancellor’s conference at the Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda, Gujarat, where he discussed the status of implementing the UGC reforms. To create a plan for the effective execution of the key initiatives, UGC has formed five zonal committees with vice-chancellors of different types of universities as members.
“UGC has introduced several reforms in the last few years. Today, more than two crore students have enrolled on the ABC portal but it is not sufficient as it is essential that all the students are enrolled on the portal and you upload all the credentials and credits certificates of the students on the ABC portal,” he said to the vice-chancellors. Academic Bank of Credits, or ABC, is a digital platform that stores the credit records of each student, which was launched as a part of the National Education Policy (NEP 2020). The ABC Academic Bank of Credits enables students to access their scores easily and facilitates their transition from one university or college to another. By June, the UGC had recorded one crore enrollments on the ABC portal. From 2023, a unique ABC ID will be compulsory for all students to get admission to universities across the country.
NEP: 200 universities adopt FYUP
He also announced that nearly 200 universities have started the four-year undergraduate program along with the internship component. “One of the biggest reforms we have started in independent India is the four-year undergraduate program. I would like to inform you that nearly 200 universities have already started the four-year program and we have made internship mandatory part of the four-year program,” Kumar said. Kumar further said that the reforms introduced under NEP are not just for 4.1 crore students who are part of the formal education system but also for those who are not part of it. “Nearly 65% of the Indians live in rural areas and 50% of India’s population is below 25 years of age. This means that a large number of students are living in rural areas. We need to ensure that students living in rural areas also have access to multiple academic areas.”
SOP for NEP 2020 implementation
Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, present at the inaugural session of the conference, praised the effort of the western zone, especially Gujarat, in leading the implementation process of NEP 2020. Congratulating the chief minister of Gujarat, Bhupendrabhai Patel and MS University on organizing the conference, Pradhan said that more than 65 lakh students that study in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa and other western states are under central government educational institutions.
The students in this zone constitute 15% of the total 4 crore students that will benefit from NEP, Pradhan said. The minister also released the standard operating procedure (SOP) for implementing NEP 2020 at the event. The SOP booklet will be a guide document for higher educational institutions to implement the reforms suggested under NEP in the next 10 years. “I congratulate the Gujarat Government for creating a roadmap for a 10-year plan to implement NEP 2020 in the state,” Pradhan said.
