How IITs are embracing liberal arts, becoming interdisciplinary and ‘university-like’

NEW DELHI: In March 2024, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi launched a two-year master’s course in Culture, Thought and Society under the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. Similarly, last year, IIT Madras, introduced a two-year master’s course in Development Studies, English and Economics, replacing its five-year integrated course.

The IITs have had humanities and social sciences departments since their inception but as “service” departments, offering electives to undergraduate BTech students. However, over the past two decades, the established IITs have embraced degree programmes in non-technical disciplines; the second-generation IITs that came up in the 2000s were consciously more “university-like” in their approach.

Also read Virtual Liberal Arts and Sciences Expo for Class 12 graduates on July 6, 7

Over the years, they have launched postgraduate programmes in a variety of social science and humanities disciplines, including economics, design, development, public policy, economics and cognitive science.

“In 2008, when second-generation IITs were formed, we wanted to be a university-like institute and not just a science and technology institute and aspired to have multidisciplinary courses and programmes, where a diverse set of disciplines could coexist. Also, IITs have remained as institutions that are governed well and we have good faculty members, with proper structure and framework,” said Jaison Manjaly, Jasubhai Memorial Chair Professor, department of humanities and social sciences, IIT Gandhinagar.

IIT Madras’ department of humanities and social sciences had been offering an integrated master’s programme for years but in 2022, they replaced it with an MA programme with a dual degree in public policy. “The idea was to train students who have some idea about social sciences who could gain a broader perspective in interdisciplinarity in development studies and economics,” said department head Rajesh Kumar.

Also read ‘Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts encourages you to think, evolve, excel’: Director

Liberal Arts: STEM to STEAM

“Students are getting attracted to liberal arts and social science courses at IITs because of its well-managed structures and serious faculties. Parents like to send their children to the best institutions. It makes a lot of difference overall,” said Manjaly.

IITs also provide a world-class university culture. “Other than engineering programmes, the liberal arts courses attract the best students not only in science and technology but also other disciplines because of the culture of IITs as it adds to their critical thinking skills,” said Gurumurthy Neelakantan, professor, department of humanities and social sciences, IIT Kanpur.

IIT Hyderabad has a department of liberal studies, offering two highly interdisciplinary master’s programmes – development studies and health, gender and society. “Globally, emphasis is shifting from science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) to science, technology, engineering, arts and maths (STEAM) with the component of arts and social sciences,” explained Srirupa Chatterjee, associate professor of English, head of the department. “Students for masters in development studies come from social sciences and humanities backgrounds, especially from economics and social work; and for health, gender and society, students come from gender studies, mass communication, cultural studies, social sciences, and humanities backgrounds.”

Several IITs, including Bombay, Delhi and Madras, have introduced master’s programmes in public policy. Kumar sees these as experiments where IITs want to open this area for engineering, humanities and science graduates to explore interdisciplinarity between engineering and public policy. IITs Gandhinagar, Delhi and Kanpur offer MSc in Cognitive Science.

Prakash Mondal, associate professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, said, “Courses like these appeal to a broader range of audience from engineering disciplines to social sciences and others from traditional humanities. Programmes like cognitive sciences teach everything related to the mind of the brain but also give exposure to engineers who have an interest in building machines that have the mental capability of humans. Similarly, through this course, someone from linguistics can pursue the linguistic foundations of mind where to an extent language relates to the human mind. Students can find a certain vantage point where they can imbibe some insights on interdisciplinary enterprise.”

Also read Liberal arts courses at Chandigarh University are a mix of social sciences, humanities, AI: Dean

Liberal arts curriculum at IITs

Nearly all such programmes being postgraduate ones, there’s typically less flexibility to mix and match courses and declare “majors” later and no foundation or “core” courses – all important markers of a liberal arts programme at the undergraduate level. Students emerging from undergraduate courses, including those in traditional universities, take admission into a programme for a specific discipline.

That said, there is still scope for flexibility and frequent updates in the curriculum. Like most unitary institutions that don’t have affiliated colleges, the department has the flexibility to design the curriculum based on the faculty’s strengths and interests.

Plus, there is a host of electives to choose from. Kumar said that IIT Madras also offers a specialisation in language, cognition, and environmental studies within the department. Further, students can pursue certain core courses and open electives in other areas, including mathematics, and engineering, he added.

The majority of these programmes at the IITs can be pursued by undergraduate students as electives and master’s students have many options to choose from. For students, economics courses have components of finance, banking, and energy among others. Similarly, development studies courses can be looked at from the perspective of gender, developmental economics and others.

Chatterjee added, “The curriculum of the master’s courses have lots of qualitative and quantitative research focused on migration and mobility, health and policy and students look at social development as a whole. We have a rigorous curriculum in health, gender and society courses which includes cross-cultural issues, anthropology, health and society and cultural aspects of gender sensitisation.”

Manjaly said that within cognitive science, there are core modules on neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and computer science. “It’s an interdisciplinary programme where you are looking at mind and cognition from very different disciplinary frameworks and therefore we see the convergence of these fields,” he said.

Also read Master’s in Liberal Arts: Bringing technology, data into humanities and social sciences

Jobs after liberal arts

IIT Jodhpur started two MSc programmes, Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences in 2022 under its department of liberal studies. The department offers programmes that bring together science and technology studies, environment, machine learning and programming, computational sociology, and digital economics.

“While this is the first batch for placements, many students are placed in start-ups, through on- and off-campus placements. The first batch of students of computational social sciences will soon receive their degree and they have received good offers and gathered internship experiences,” said Farhat Naz, head, School of Liberal Arts (SoLA), IIT Jodhpur.

For students willing to pursue competitive exams in government services, humanities and social sciences courses are substantial and also in other government and non-government organisations, added Kumar. Similarly, Chatterjee stated that people coming out of these courses have a strong academic rigour and many would choose to do further research or pursue higher education.

“Many from the department have started their NGOs, among others, but options are mostly social development-related,” she said.

Also read Liberal arts universities are taking a ‘problem-centric approach’ to education

Upcoming courses at IITs

Naz stated that the global educational framework is undergoing a rapid change and top private liberal arts universities in India are following the trends with IITs doing the same. “In the US, engineering scholars are often applying for projects in collaboration with social scientists when the project has strong social relevance and implications, like in the areas of climate change, sustainability, ethics of artificial intelligence and others. Soon, courses like computational social sciences will be the norm and even the traditional social science departments in universities have to make way for them,” added Naz.

Further, many IITs are poised to start several new courses. IIT Kanpur and IIT Indore are working on the curriculum of MA in English. IIT Hyderabad is planning to introduce a master’s programmes in economics and public policy.

School of Liberal Arts at IIT Jodhpur is developing an Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP), leading to a BSc.BEd degree which will be introduced in 2024-2025, stated Naz.

IIT Gandhinagar is planning to start a course in technology and democracy as one of the master’s programmes. They are also starting “executive master’s” in areas such as performance practice, visual storytelling and filmmaking. “We are also trying to develop a BA programme in art, design and technology. But all these are in the pipeline,” added Manjaly.