'Only those with in-depth and interdisciplinary knowledge have a future': V. Kamakoti

Interview/ V. Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras

What are the new developments in technical education?

The emphasis is on becoming more and more interdisciplinary. Gone are the days when there was just some programming, basically evaluate and do a job. Today the job prospects are more for people who can conceive a system, conceive the architecture of a larger system, which involves more than one discipline.

Two important initiatives have come from the ministry of education. The first is that they have said that 40 per cent of the courses can be taken online. Many universities have made [the changes]. If you are doing an engineering, say civil engineering for example, 40 per cent have become open electives. So since students can take this 40 per cent online, they can take some robotics courses, which are today important for civil engineering students for 3D printing. They can take operation research courses which are important for building management. They can take certain sensor courses which are important for structural health management for buildings. So these are the new job prospects, because we need civil engineers with additional knowledge.

The second thing is that the UGC has said that you can do two degrees at the same time. One in the morning and another in the evening, so that the time tables do not clash. This is an important announcement. Our data science and electronic system programme BS has 43,000 students, as on date. This is because a lot of people attend a day college and in the evening they come and do this degree. And, as per the National Education Policy, we have four modes—a one-year certificate course, a two-year diploma, a three-year BSc and a four-year BS. There are people who are taking only the evening programme and pursuing other activities in the day. In the future only those with interdisciplinary qualifications will have jobs.

What trends do you expect will stay relevant in the long term?

All the core engineering courses are here to stay for the long term. For example, all the BTech courses that we are offering at IIT Madras or at any other IIT, have a lifetime of at least 30 to 40 years, as every course has certain fundamentals. They have a lot of industry relevance and are also visionary. Fundamentals are important and a vision is more important as to how these are going to contribute to society, contribute to the socioeconomic, technical development of the country.

Today, we need people doing more core technology. We have started a podcast that talks about the courses that you can choose. The first episode was about agriculture sciences, where we talked about new aspects in agriculture, the challenges and why you should choose it. One professor talked about civil engineering and how it will be relevant even after 40 years. What interdisciplinary, extra electives will support more knowledge was covered in the podcast.

A young student may feel the existing courses are enough. But, for example, if you are doing computer science engineering, just the course knowledge is not enough. In the future you should have the knowledge of architecting a computer science related job. Those who have peripheral knowledge at the peripheral level will be thrown out. Only those with in-depth and interdisciplinary knowledge have a future. If there is a hit, like the dot com burst or the Y2K issue, those without fundamental knowledge will not have the space and may not prove to be successful.

What must the Indian institutes do to contribute to the nation's growth story?

There are 27 national missions. Many [institutions] participate in these missions, like doing some funding, giving some proposals for activities related to these missions. The second thing, a sort of integrating factor, is sustainability. Any project you conceive, if it is not aligned with sustainable development, it will go for a toss. There is a necessity to focus on a sustainable development goal as proposed by the United Nations, which is a globally accepted set of goals.

In addition to this, ranking mechanisms helps in working on common goals like sustainability, scholarships and inclusivity. These ranking mechanisms bring in a uniformity in the way the institutions look at the country’s development. So these are some very good unifying factors.

And, institutions today want to concentrate on critical emerging technologies to contribute to nation building. Incubation centres are now supported widely and they are looking at patenting and innovations. There is focus on solving certain national problems and protecting ideas for the country.