New Delhi, The compliance of Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) will be mandatory for the Institutions of Higher Education offering online, open and distance learning (ODL) programmes, the UGC has said.

Soon UGC is going to send a letter to the higher educational institutions (HEIs) offering online and ODL programmes to mandatorily register their students in ABC. There are 58 HEIs offering online and 86 HEIs offering ODL programmes.

UGC Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar told IANS that there will be mandatory compliance of the ABC for programmes offered in ODL and Online mode.

With respect to the above subject, UGC is planning to send a letter to the different Institutions of Higher Education. The UGC is going to tell these institutions that the ABC is mandatory as envisaged in the NEP-2020 and is a National-level facility to promote flexibility of curriculum framework and interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary academic mobility of students across the Higher Educational Institutions (HEls) in the country with an appropriate "Credit Transfer" mechanism.

According to the UGC chairman, the ABC provides each of the students the facility to open a unique individual Academic Bank Account in digital form. Each account holder is provided with a unique id. The major functions of ABC are the registration of HEls under the ABC scheme and, opening, closure and validation of academic accounts of students, credit verification, credit accumulation, credit transfer or redemption of the students and also the promotion of the ABC among 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 creating ABC ID for the students through DigiLocker portal will be attached with the documents of UGC for the reference of institutions of higher education.

"In view of the above, HEIs are requested to comply with the above direction and communicate the action taken in the matter to UGC," Kumar added.