Credit Based Fee Structure

The National Credit Framework (NCrF) standardizes and organizes the academic credits earned by students in higher education institutions (HEIs) across the country. It provides a framework for the recognition, transfer, and accumulation of credits earned by students during their academic pursuits. For a student, to complete a certain degree, s/he needs to complete and stack at least the minimum number of credits prescribed for that degree under different baskets.

The UGC allows students to earn up to 40 percent of their credits through online MOOC courses offered by the Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) platform. This initiative aims to promote online learning and provide students with the flexibility to supplement their traditional classroom education with online courses.

It also aligns with the broader goals of educational accessibility. Emphasis of National Education Policy (NEP 2020) on student mobility, Multiple exit and Entry, Skill Development, Ability Enhancement, Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) and Multi Disciplinary approach of education undoubtedly holds lot of merits for students. Above mentioned initiatives supported by Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) and National Academic Depository (NAD) makes the whole system operationally possible.

Today a long awaited “Design your degree”, which allows for customization of degree has become a reality, even in this part of the world. However, there are certain areas where HEIs need to work out the mechanism for effective implementation of these policies. One such area is the fee collected from the students. Flat fee structure does not seem fair and will cease to work soon.

If a student is given freedom to earn credits from multiple sources online and offline, accordingly dynamic fee structures need to be devised to align with the evolving educational landscape where students have more options to earn credits from diverse sources. Introducing credit based fee structure is therefore need of the hour. Student will only pay for those credits which s/he registers in the Institute.

For those courses which s/he has registered on SWAYAM or in some other institute, s/he does not need to pay. What about the courses within the institute? How much does one credit cost within the institute? Higher Educational Institutions offer various programmes which can be broadly categorized in General, Professional, Technical and Vocational education. Existing fee structures in HEIs are different for different programmes falling under different educational categories mentioned above.

Under CBCS if a student registers certain credits from other programme belonging to different educational category, s/he has to pay a per credit fee of the offering department. Cost-per-credit has to be another attribute of a course in addition to its syllabus, credits, level etc.

Fee to be paid by the student in a certain semester will be the sum total of cost of credits registered by him in that semester, in which some credits may be expensive and some credits may be economical depending on the Department offering the course.

Credit based fee structure will give rise to a scenario where students of same programme in same semester may be charged different fee. This poses a challenge, which of course, can be resolved by implementing a proper IT solution. However, this may make certain economical courses more popular among the students. Regulations addressing the issues like refund, backlog and withdrawal of credits are also required to be formulated for effective implementation of the system. 

By Afaq Alam Khan, Assistant Professor, Department of Information Technology, Central University of Kashmir