The UGC has said that academic bank of credit (ABC) compliance will be mandatory for higher education institutions offering online, open and distance learning (ODL) programmes.
Soon the UGC is going to send a letter to the Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) offering online and ODL programs to compulsorily register their students in ABC. 58 HEIs are offering online and 86 HEIs are offering ODL programs.
UGC President M. Jagadesh Kumar told IANS that there will be mandatory compliance of ABC for programs offered in ODL and online mode.
According to the Chairman of UGC, ABC provides facility to each student to open a unique individual academic bank account in digital form. Each account holder is assigned a unique ID.
The major functions of ABC are registration of HEL under ABC scheme and, opening, closing and verification of academic accounts of students, credit verification, credit accumulation, credit transfer or redemption of students and promotion of ABC amongst the stakeholders. ,
Accordingly, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has directed HEIs to adopt the ABC and mandatorily to create Academic Bank of Credit ID of students and deposit their credits with ABC for programmes offered in ODL and Online mode. Further, LMS of all Universities offering online programmes may be integrated similarly with ABC portal.
In this regard, a help manual for generating ABC ID for students through Digilocker portal will be attached with the documents of UGC for reference of institutions of higher education. “In view of the above, HEI is requested to comply with the above instruction and apprise the UGC of the action taken in the matter,” Kumar said.
