Pune: As social rights activist Malcolm X rightly put, “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
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The Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) which was ranked 10th in the recently released National Institute Framework Rankings (NIFR) seems to be following these footsteps as it is all set to begin the choice-based credit system (CBCS) for their undergraduate courses from the coming academic year 2019-2020. The varsity was mulling upon introducing CBCS at the undergraduate level in its affiliated colleges too.
The decision will be cleared during the Senate meeting to be held on Saturday. Apparently, until now although the university was having this system in place, it was limited to the postgraduate course of the various university departments and its affiliated colleges.
It was senate member and principal of Prof Ramakrishna More Arts, Commerce and Science College, Manohar Chaskar, who raised the question about whether the university will introduce CBCS for undergraduate courses, as the varsity was likely to revise its curriculum in the new academic year.
However, the choice-based credit system hasn’t been fully implemented in the current academic system, informed Senate member Sudhakar Jadhavar who replied to the aforementioned question. He stated that the university was planning to do so, but no rules and regulations have been formulated to implement the CBCS in colleges up till now. “It will be decided in the Senate meeting,” he told Sakal Times.
“The credit system benefits students in many ways like students can avail different subjects and gain credits. This broadens their knowledge in other subjects as well. Students can also enrol into other colleges and avail their courses if required which comes under a choice-based credit system,” said Chaskar.
“The teacher-student ratio in our country was imbalanced, unlike other countries where it is 1:10. We have either 1:60 or 1:80 and so on. Therefore, in this condition, it was difficult to bring in the CBCS because of an inadequate number of teachers available to evaluate students in such large numbers. Each teacher conducts at least three or four subjects. Considering this, they already have around 300 students to evaluate. The credit system will require continuous evaluation process which becomes difficult,” said Jadhavar.
“One of the solutions could be by filling up the vacant posts of teachers which will increase the manpower. It will also smoothen the system and a proper and flawless evaluation system can be done,” added Jadhavar.
“CBCS will add students from different colleges. However, as soon as the teacher-student ratio gap was filled, it will be possible to implement that as well. Also, soon it will be brought in the academics,” said Jadhavar.
In 2017, Sakal Times had reported that SPPU was supposed to review the existing credit system when the academic council had highlighted that due to a shortage of manpower it was difficult to properly devise the credit system.
“Then, the academic council was concerned about lack of manpower, therefore it was decided to continue only for postgraduation courses. However, now it seems that the situation has stabilised a bit and the university is positively considering to implement the system in academics. Also, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has mandated it,” said Chaskar.
Chaskar further said, “Once the discussion was initiated about starting the credit system, then a solution to the problems can be brought to the fore.”
