IIT-Delhi seeks to draw young engineers with new curriculum

livemint.com:

MUMBAI : Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi is overhauling its syllabus after a decade to weave in sustainability and bring in flexibility in engineering courses to engage the younger generation. The institute, established in 1961, is reaching out to India Inc, recruiters and education consultants to bring in more experiential ways of learning. The publicly funded institute is concerned that its corpus of ₹600 crore falls way short of what it needs— ₹10,000-12,000 crore—to build infrastructure and offer better options to grow the institute.

“We are in the midst of curriculum review. We are seeing what we can do for the first-year students to excite them. Every 10 years or so we go through a complete curriculum review.

We have set up a set of goals in terms of what we want the new curriculum to be," Rangan Banerjee, director at IIT-Delhi told Mint. The new curriculum for different subjects taught at the college is expected to be rolled out in the 2024 academic session. The institute’s decision to overhaul also comes on the back of new-age technologies, teaching methods and expectations of students.

Banerjee said higher education all over the world is facing a “challenge" in terms of attention spans because of the impact of social media. “Sources of information are different, expectations are different. To align to meet these things, and then to excite needs a different kind of orientation," said the director.