IIT-Bombay revamps UG curriculum to fit changing career trends

IIT-Bombay revamps UG curriculum to fit changing career trends in an attempt to overhaul its Undergraduate (UG) curriculum to meet the changing trends and has introduced Management, Entrepreneurship and Design courses along with Humanities as part of its regular core engineering curriculum.

The non-engineering subjects such as Humanities, Arts, Social Science, Management, Entrepreneurship, Design, or as the IIT Bombay calls it ‘HASMED’ — will be the major highlights in the new course curriculum.

This curriculum will be followed along an interdisciplinary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) approach, which will be combined with the core engineering subjects of a specific branch that a student is pursuing.

“The first step was to try and identify where the IIT Bombay graduates are going after completing their degree”, according to Prof. Kishore Chatterjee, head convener of the committee that worked on the curriculum overhaul.

Specialists follow the path of academic or research work or join a core sector enterprise. Generalists are those who want to build a career in management, analytics, and consultancy, which is beyond the core sector.

Additionally, another group such as the 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 were identified, it was important to see how the needs of each of these segments can be met. The idea is to help our graduating students to become leaders in whichever path they choose,” added Chatterjee.

The curriculum overhaul consisted of an 11-member committee set up in 2019. The committee was also represented by students.

The committee has developed a fundamental curriculum based on the data collated over the years, informally, through student interactions and placement trends. This was then shared with various stakeholders of the institutes – students, faculty, recruiters and alumni for final calibration, remarked Chatterjee.

Prof. Avinash Mahajan, Dean of Academics at IIT Bombay said that the curriculum at the premier institute was last changed back in 2007.

Students will have to select a minimum of two to three courses from each basket along with its core-engineering branch subjects and aligned science courses. Explaining with an example, Chatterjee, said, “A student from the mechanical engineering branch will have to study the core subjects of his/her branch. The number of core subjects may vary as per the branch. In addition to this, each student has to select a minimum of three electives from sectors allied with mechanical engineering and two courses each from HASMED and STEM basket. Moreover; each student has to pursue five additional courses from any or a mix of the basket of courses.”

For HASMED courses, the institute will offer courses/subjects in association with non-engineering schools on campus such as the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IDC School of Design and Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, Desai Sethi School of Entrepreneurship, among others. For STEM courses, partnerships will be urged between different engineering branches.

Additionally, the students at IIT Bombay will also have a compulsory ‘Makers Space’ where a student is expected to create something for hands-on experience. “‘Makes Space’ replaces the existing compulsory course on engineering drawing workshops. This could also have an interdisciplinary approach based on the requirements of the product that is being developed,” Mahajan concluded.