Reading the NEP 06: Three Years, Four Years and a Bank of Credits
English

When a student leaves college
before her degree is done,
she usually fills in a form like this one:
an application for a transfer certificate.
A commerce student
brought me hers yesterday.
She has to leave after two years.
She asked what she leaves with,
and whether she can ever come back.
Until recently,
two years of a degree usually ended
in a few mark sheets and this form.
The policy offers her a diploma,
and a bank that keeps her credits.
Paragraph 11.9 opens
with a degree of three or four years,
with exits along the way.
The rest of it is about
a student like her.
It names, as examples,
what a student takes away at each exit.
A certificate comes after one year,
a diploma after two
and a bachelor's degree after three.
The four-year programme,
it says, shall be the preferred option.
It offers
the full range of a holistic education,
with a major
and minors of the student's choice.
Multiple entry and exit points,
the chapter says earlier,
will remove rigid boundaries
and create new possibilities
for lifelong learning.
The same paragraph sets up
an Academic Bank of Credit.
It is to store digitally the credits
a student earns
at recognised institutions,
so that a degree can count them.
And the four-year programme may lead
to a degree with Research,
if the student completes
a rigorous research project in her major.
The next paragraph allows three
designs of master's degree.
It may take two years
after a three-year degree,
one year after
a four-year degree with Research,
or five years integrated
with the bachelor's.
A PhD shall require
either a master's degree
or a four-year degree with Research.
And the MPhil shall be discontinued.
So my student can leave with a diploma,
and her credits will wait for her?
On this text, yes.
The paragraph does not say
what a credit is, though.
The policy uses the word
in several chapters
and defines it nowhere.
The UGC's credit framework
of December 2022 defines it.
A credit is an hour of lectures every week
for a semester, 15 hours in all,
or twice that in practical work.
A three-year degree needs 120 credits.
A four-year degree,
which the framework calls Honours,
needs 160.
A certificate needs 40 and a diploma 80,
each with a 4-credit vocational course
or internship in the summer.
A student who leaves may come back
within three years,
and must finish within seven.
The credit bank,
set up under UGC regulations of July 2021,
keeps credits valid for up to seven years.
Could a small department like ours offer
the degree with Research?
The framework asks for at least
two permanent teachers
recognised as PhD supervisors,
and the research facilities
to go with them.
The student needs 75 per cent
in her first six semesters.
PhD regulations of November 2022 ended
the MPhil and opened the PhD
to four-year graduates with 75 per cent.
In April 2025 UGC regulations made
the structure binding,
exits at 40 and 80 credits included.
An institution
that ignores them can be barred
from offering degrees.
In January 2026 the UGC sent its own
revised credit bank regulations back
for more inputs.
It also decided to try revised guidelines
on entry and exit in a pilot
before adopting them.
Has any batch actually reached
a fourth year?
Delhi University's first batch did,
in August 2025.
Of about 76,000 students admitted in 2022,
about 36,000 went on to a fourth year,
or 47 per cent.
For the one-year master's that the policy
pairs with a four-year degree,
the university had about 5,900 seats
and 12,100 applicants in 2026.
In July 2026 the Union government
told the Rajya Sabha
that 20 of the 46 central universities
had no fourth-year batch yet.
In June 2026 a college principal in Assam
said nearly 100 colleges
of Assam University had a syllabus
for the fourth year but no regulations.
Karnataka began the four-year degree
in 2021 and returned new batches
to three years from 2024.
Kerala allows a single exit,
after the third year.
In June 2026
the state government announced
a review of the whole programme.
By July 2026 the credit bank
held nearly 9.8 crore credit records
from about 2,900 institutions,
the ministry said.
It gave no count of credits actually
carried from one institution to another.
In July 2025
the Union government said exit options
in 74 universities had helped
about 25,600 undergraduates.
It did not say after which year they left,
or how many came back.
As of October 2026 we
have found no count of either.
Be honest with me.
Is an exit after one year flexibility,
or a dropout with a certificate?
Leena Chandran Wadia,
who helped draft the policy,
wrote in 2022
that accumulating credits is likely
to be a boon to poor students.
She had in mind especially women,
who are often forced to drop out
for economic and social reasons.
She called the four-year programme
one of the policy's cornerstones.
Satish Deshpande,
a sociologist then teaching
at Delhi University,
wrote in 2022 that exits
from a degree make no sense in India.
Where jobs are this scarce, he argued,
it is hard to see who gains
from the option to leave.
He also called one curriculum
for four degrees an impossible task.
We are an affiliated college,
and the university writes the ordinance.
What can I do this month?
Turn your course into hours,
and check them against your timetable.
A 4-credit history paper
means 60 hours of lectures,
and a 2-credit music
practical means 60 hours too.
Then read your university's ordinance
for three things:
when a student may leave,
what the fourth year requires,
and the last date to return.
And before any student leaves,
sit with her and check
that every semester's credits show
in her credit bank account.
I will check her account
with her before she goes.
Whether she comes back
within three years is up to her,
and to her family.
Her credits will keep until then.
The full text
and our sources are linked below.
Next time, your own classroom:
who decides what you teach,
how you teach it and how you mark it.