IITs, IIMs to Add Humanities to Curriculum

IITs and IIMs have, in a way, always overlooked Humanities and the Social Sciences. Their focus was on teaching Science, Technology and Management.

This is set to change in the upcoming years. The need for graduates in subjects other than their regular curriculum is increasing in the recent times. This has made it is necessary for these institutions to produce “well-rounded individuals” rather than just plain graduates.

A thorough understanding of our society, the polity, economy and history is also important, not just the knowledge of software programs and scientific equations.

Humanities’ courses like English, Economics and Philosophy were always a part of the IIT curriculum.

And now the IIITs and IIMs are also catching up. IIT-Jodhpur has just launched the Centre of Excellence on Arts and Digital Immersion. And IIT-Guwahati added a Masters’ program for the liberal arts a few months ago.

IIM-Bangalore has plans to introduce a four-year undergraduate program in liberal arts from 2023.

According to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, “technical training is to be interwoven with opportunities to engage deeply with other disciplines”.

The aim of introducing Humanities in the curriculum is to make graduates more familiar with the real world.

Humanities as a subject offers a much deeper insight into how the real world works. It also provides solutions on how to deal with problems of the world, which are not always along the lines of a textbook. These engineers and future managers should know how to deal with messy and chaotic real-world problems.

That will be possible only when they have knowledge of the Humanities subjects. Polity, Economics, and Literature is key to their better future.