A university is a place where a young individual gets the opportunity to explore within the pilgrimage of knowledge, get to know the diversification of society, develop their personality, connect with people, and create a memory of a lifetime.
If we look into the academic system of most of our universities in Bangladesh, both public and private universities are offering degrees in various disciplines. In order to award any particular degree, a credit system with specified hours is maintained by most universities. So what is a credit system? Generally, a credit system involves assigning credits to each element of an educational program. At present, in Bangladesh, both open and closed credit systems are in place. Under an open credit system, a student can customize the courses according to their own choices, whereas in a closed credit system, a student can’t customize the courses; the whole academic setup is pre-determined by the academic authority.

Private universities in Bangladesh were the pioneers in introducing the open credit system in our country. However, the public universities still control their academics in a fixed credit system in their undergrad and postgraduate programs, but the evening/executive or professional programs of public universities are operated in an open credit manner since those programs are mostly designed for working professionals, giving them the freedom to choose the courses on the basis of their office schedule.

Both open and closed credit systems have their pros and cons. For instance, apart from customizing the courses in an open credit system, it can be a good option for saving an additional amount of money by taking fewer courses for a particular semester. By doing this, it enables a great chance for a student to invest his time in doing any part-time jobs for arranging tuition fees. On the other hand, if we look at the cons of an open credit system, sticking up with a particular friend circle would be the toughest thing to do because, after one semester, it would be hard to find them in the same courses because of the course offerings and different course preferences of others. 

Driving to the closed credit system, the most significant pros would be that it has a well-structured course setup with fixed credit hours for each semester. A freshman can stick to a friend circle for the whole varsity life, which gives a long-lasting bonding experience. On the contrary, the cons of the closed credit system might be that a student can feel burdened to take all those fixed courses, and if a student hates someone or groups, he or she has to be with them for the whole varsity life because there is no way to customize  the courses.

With merits and demerits in both credit systems, the fact is what is  the final outcome of each of these systems can offer to a student in the long run because the country is still fighting with a large number of educated unemployed graduates.