IIT Madras to start 3 separate MA programmes in development studies, English, economics

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras is introducing three new MA programmes in development studies, English, and economics. The MA programmes are being offered by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences with the objective of increasing the intake and the pool of candidates who can apply for these programmes. IIT Madras will offer these postgraduate programmes from the 2023 session.

IIT Madras will begin the application process for MA programmes from April or March 23 and classes will commence from July 2023. Instead of Humanities and Social Sciences Entrance Examination (HSEE), IIT Madras will take admission to the two-year MA programmes on the basis of a soon-to-be-announced entrance test.

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IIT Madras is expanding the scope of the MA programme by adding Economics to the already existing streams of Development Studies and English Studies and offering all the three streams as two-year programmes instead of the current five-year integrated MA programmes.

Each MA programme will have 25 seats for Indian students. The institute will also offer supernumerary seats to international students.

IIT Madras MA programmes

“IIT Madras is hopeful of attracting a more diverse set of candidates by making the MA programmes available after graduation from varied streams,” said an official statement from IITM.

The unique aspects of the new programmes include evidence-based policy analyses, role of technology in shaping socio-economic development, data science and governance, engagement with contemporary issues such as climate change, sustainability, urbanization etc., it said.

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The course curriculum of the MA programmes will be restructured to include more contemporary subjects such as Economics of Innovation, Urban Planning and Development, Health Policy, Environmental Humanities, Climate Economics, Technology and Policy, and Computational Linguistics, etc., the IITM statement further said.

Highlighting the major impact of this new initiative, Professor V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “The restructuring of the MA programme is done with an aim to make the same accessible to more students who have completed their bachelor degrees from multiple disciplines spreading across humanities, science, commerce, engineering etc. Such type of a humanities and social science exposure is very much needed for the next generations of students to face and address different challenges posed by the modern world. This expanded list of MA programs will open-up new avenues of placement and employability as the students will be trained as domain specific experts with international readiness and national focus.”