IIT Bombay revamps UG syllabus to keep pace with changing career trends

The institute will now have management, entrepreneurship and design courses along with humanities as part of their regular core engineering curriculum. 

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has revamped its undergraduate curriculum to suit the changing trends. As per a report published in The Indian Express, engineering students at IIT Bombay will now have management, entrepreneurship and design courses along with humanities as part of their regular core engineering curriculum. 

Non-engineering subjects in curriculum 

The non-engineering subjects — humanities, arts, social science, management, entrepreneurship, design (HASMED) — are of great importance in the new course curriculum. This is along with an interdisciplinary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) approach combined with the core engineering subjects of a specific branch that a student is pursuing. 

Kishore Chatterjee, head convener of the committee that worked on the curriculum revamp, said the idea is to help students become leaders in whichever path they choose. “This can be clubbed into three broad groups — specialist, generalist and super-generalist.  

Specialists are those who do academic or research work, or join a core sector enterprise. Generalists are those who aspire for a career in management, analytics, consultancy, among all, which is away from the core sector. And super-generalist, where a student wants to take the path of startups and entrepreneurship in different sectors and where knowledge of core engineering as well as other areas is required. Once all three groups are identified, it is important to see how the needs of each of these segments can be met,” said Chatterjee.  The curriculum revamp is a result of an 11-member committee that was established in 2019. The committee was also represented by students. 

Read more: 

• IIT Hyderabad exhibits industry-ready technologies ahead of R&D fair 
• 350 seats in 3 Chandigarh engg colleges yet to be filled 
• 16 languages spoken on IIT Jodhpur campus, claims survey