Need well-rounded professionals’ — why IITs, IIMs & IIITs are giving humanities a new thrust

New Delhi: It’s no longer enough to churn out graduates who know their engineering equations, software programmes, or management theories, but to produce ‘well-rounded professionals’ with a deep understanding of society, economics, polity, history, and more — so seems to be the growing consensus among top technical and professional institutes across India.

Over the last few years, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have picked up humanities and the liberal arts in a big way, whether by offering new degree programmes, expanding the range of elective courses on offer, or starting transdisciplinary initiatives.

For instance, this month IIT-Jodhpur inaugurated its Centre 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 programme in liberal arts. IIT-Madras will offer a Master’s degree in economics, English, and development studies from 2023. IIM-Bangalore, too, plans to offer a four-year undergraduate program in liberal arts from next year.

Demand from students for a multi-disciplinary education and from the industry to have more “well-informed” professionals has fuelled the trend, experts who spoke to ThePrint said.

What has also provided an impetus is the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which calls for technical training to be interwoven with “opportunities to engage deeply with other disciplines”, with the aim of eventually “enhancing the employability of the youth”.

While IITs have been offering courses in humanities like economics, philosophy and English since their inception, and are now ramping up their offerings, the IIITs and IIMs are fairly new on the block. Across the board, these institutes are focusing on hiring professors with degrees from high-ranking international and Indian universities.

“The IITs always had humanities — they have had some of the best philosophy and sociology departments. But now IIITs and some other institutes are also including social sciences and humanities in their curriculum in a major way,” said Nishad Patnaik, who did his PhD from the New School for Social Research in New York and currently teaches philosophy at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Delhi.