The Indian Institute of Technology has announced a comprehensive revamp of its curriculum. The revamped curriculum will introduce new degree options including the Honours degree and options of new inter-departmental degree programmes. It will also extend the scope of learning to include Social sciences, Communication, Humanities, Economics, Management, and Environment (SCHEME). The core courses will be restructured to give greater flexibility to the core curriculum. Further, the programme will also enable counting of designated online courses done by students on MOOC platforms to be counted for credits.
Prof Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur said, “A key aspect of the revamp is adding the much needed flexibility to the system to adapt to the changing academic landscape across the world. We are hopeful that these features will enable IIT Kanpur to be the preferred institute for its programmes both nationally and internationally.”
NEP push
Some other features include student exchange across institutions for the Masters as a part of the Bachelors-Masters Dual Degree programme, direct admission for talented students via globally acclaimed Olympiads, academic credits for approved entrepreneurial activities, and an exit option degree for those students who want to leave the programme in the middle. The existing grading scheme has been made more granular with a fine-grained mechanism of student evaluation as well.
The academic programmes and the associated curricula at IIT Kanpur undergo a comprehensive review every ten years. The present review for the decade beginning in 2020-21 was initiated in November 2018 and was completed in September 2021 after a detailed consultative process involving the various stakeholders including the alumni. The review process began with exhaustive deliberations within a committee comprising 17 members drawn from the various academic departments as well as the student community.
This was followed by a round of discussions in the departments, the Senate and an Open House involving the faculty at large as well as the student representatives. The Final Report, taking into account the feedback received from the departments, the Senate, and the Open House, was placed before the Senate for discussion, where it was subsequently approved.