This book discusses organizational, management and professional dimensions of change as credit-based systems are introduced in higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. Credit-based systems are taken to mean the flexible academic structures based around the parallel but interrelated concepts of credit and modularity. They are being looked to as ways to increase flexibility, widen access, rationalize resources and stimulate and support major change in a time of declining investment in higher education and more diverse student bodies. For credit-based systems to make a difference, style of introduction, management values, professional leadership, and sophisticated understandings of learning processes are as important as the structures themselves. The potential exists for new forms of partnership whereby a concern with learning--in its full developmental sense--is placed at the heart of the system. The risks are already in evidence here. Students who merely accumulate credits, with little opportunity to integrate, reflect on and make sense of themselves and their learning across these different modules, are not being developed for a world that is complex and requires holistic and connected ways of thinking. The topics examined included: credit and alternative structures; institutional responses; impacts on managers, academic staff and students; quality control and accountability; and future developments. (Contains 21 references.) (BF)