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New Delhi: It is no longer enough to produce graduates who know their engineering equations, software programs, or management theory, but to produce ‘well-rounded professionals’ with a deep understanding of society, economics, government, history, and more—seems to be the consensus thrives among the leading technical and professional institutes across India.
Over the past few years, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have promoted the humanities and liberal arts on a large scale, either by offering degree programs, expanding the range of programs options offered, or initiate transdisciplinary initiatives.
For example, this month IIT-Jodhpur inaugurated the Center of Excellence on Arts and Digital Immersion, which will reportedly “explore the intersection of art and digital technology”. Earlier this year, IIT-Guwahati launched a Master’s program in liberal arts. IIT-Madras will offer Master’s degrees in economics, English, and development studies starting in 2023. IIM-Bangalore also plans to offer a four-year undergraduate program in liberal arts starting next year.
Demand from students for multi-disciplinary education and from industry to have more “well-rounded” professionals have fueled the trend, said experts who spoke to ThePrint.
Also providing impetus is the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which calls for technical training to be woven with “opportunities to engage deeply with other disciplines”, with the ultimate aim of “enhancing youth employability”.
While IIT has been offering humanities courses such as economics, philosophy and English since its inception, and are now increasing their offerings, IIIT and IIM are fairly new to the block. Overall, these institutions focus on recruiting professors with degrees from high-level international and Indian universities.
“IIT has always had the humanities — they have some of the best philosophy and sociology departments. But now IIIT and several other institutes are also incorporating social sciences and humanities in their curriculum on a large scale,” said Nishad Patnaik, who holds a PhD from the New School for Social Research in New York and currently teaches philosophy at the Indraprastha Institute. Information Technology (IIIT) in Delhi.
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‘Life skills’, ‘multidisciplinary competencies’
While technical courses equip students with the necessary domain knowledge, humanities courses make them aware of global citizens, according to Farhat Naz, principal of the IIT-Jodhpur School of Liberal Arts, which this year started its Masters program in computational social sciences.
“Humanities courses not only teach students life skills but also make them think outside their curriculum to reflect on the human self, literature and culture, citizenship, rights and politics,” Naz told ThePrint.
At IIT Roorkee, the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, which primarily offers elective and core courses for undergraduate and graduate students, began a two-year Master’s program in economics in 2016, with a focus on financial economics, public policy, and development economics. .
In 2021, the institute also commences a five-year BS-MS program in economics, with a four-year exit option leading to a Bachelor’s degree. “The aim of the program is to develop well-rounded professionals capable of applying economic analysis (theory and practice), sound decision-making, and inter- and multidisciplinary competencies — mathematics, computing, entrepreneurship, and managerial,” Department of Humanities and Head of Social Sciences Anindya Jayanta Mishra says.
IIT-Madras, which already offers Masters programs in English and development studies, will start offering an MA in Economics from the 2023-24 academic year, said Jyotirmaya Tripathy, head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.
All IITs also offer elective courses in the humanities, for which students earn academic credit. Typically, undergraduate students at IIT take three electives from the humanities in a year, from subjects such as anthropology, sociology, linguistics, literature, history, politics, philosophy, economics, and public policy.
Discipline must ‘talk to one another’
In contrast to IIT, IIIT is relatively new to offer degree programs in social sciences and humanities.
The Indraprastha-Delhi Institute of Information Technology, for example, established the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2017, with the aim of producing “knowledgeable engineers”. Its offerings include interdisciplinary B. Tech programs in computer science and social sciences.
“The idea is to have engineers who are able to provide solutions that matter to people in the field and have an understanding of society and social issues, and not just engineering,” said Paro Mishra, faculty member at the IIIT-Delhi Department. Humanities and Social Sciences.
He added the humanities department is growing, with 14 full-time faculty members and students pursuing PhD degrees in subjects such as economics, sociology, and cognitive psychology, among others.
“Interest in humanities courses has increased in recent years, as even the industry demands people who understand real-life challenges, can communicate with people, and are more knowledgeable,” he said.
In 2019, the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad started a five-year dual degree program combining B.Tech in computer science and MSc in computing and human sciences through research.
“The Human Sciences Research Group at IIIT Hyderabad is a unique attempt to bring together social science and computer science. We believe that understanding the nature of the transformation brought to the fore by digital technology requires two disciplines to talk to each other,” says the department’s website.
Aniket Alam, professor at the Human Sciences Research Group, said that all higher education institutions, not just technical ones, had “realized the importance of taking liberal arts more seriously”.
“Earlier, institutions would offer humanities as one of the credit courses but now they have realized the true potential of it. Many of them have started offering full-time programs,” he said.
Real world management
The latest entrant on the block is the Indian Institute of Management, with IIM-Kozhikode starting an MBA in liberal studies and management in 2019.
The web page for the course says that the degree was launched because there is an “urgent need for alternative forms of management education” as “scientific teaching and learning methods alone are not sufficient to prepare future managers”.
It notes that management education has traditionally drawn heavily from scientific fact-finding methods in controlled environments, but in the real world, business is often conducted in an environment “where judgments are made with messy, incomplete, and incoherent data”.
Giving details of the new program, IIM-K director Debashis Chatterjee said the idea was “to nurture the best management minds” and to develop “innovative, socially responsible and environmentally friendly practitioners, leaders and educators” who can survive on the global stage. .
In 2020, IIM-Bangalore announced that it will start offering a four-year undergraduate program in liberal arts from 2023 to create a “new generation of leaders” who will be able to apply “multiple perspectives” to solving thorny problems in India.
Faculty selection
When it comes to faculty selection, IIT, IIIT, and IIM are vying for the best results, with few employees holding Oxbridge or Ivy League titles. Many faculty members also come from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) because of their strong social sciences and humanities.
Regarding the faculty for the liberal arts program at IIM-K, Chatterjee said the current faculty members are drawn from well-known American and Indian universities. The names he cites include Indiana University Bloomington, IIM-Calcutta, JNU, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.
Or IIT and IIM, which are public institutions, the selection criteria include the norms set by the government for academic qualifications and number of publications.
Faculty members who have completed their PhD abroad or taught at foreign universities believe that Indian institutes are finally catching up to global trends.
Patnaik from IIIT-Delhi, who also teaches in New York, notes that US universities are approaching the humanities as a school in an “organized and professional” way, which is now finally developing in India. “Institutions here have realized the importance of teaching the humanities,” he added.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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