JNTU includes humanities, arts in engg courses

Beginning this year, the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, an affiliating university for engineering colleges in the state, has included management, Indian heritage and culture, economics, psychology, communication skills and other subjects in the curriculum of engineering courses.

This would be applicable for its constituent and affiliated colleges as well. The state has the highest 670 engineering colleges with over 200,000 students. JNTU Hyderabad has over 250 affiliates colleges and about 1,00,000 students under its fold.

Speaking to Business Standard, university vice-chancellor D Narasimha Reddy said the idea behind introducing arts and humanities into the engineering curriculum was to enhance the employability of the students. This was an attempt to correct the bias that engineering students do not have functional knowledge of other domains.

The All India Council of Technical Education, the apex body that regulates the technical education in India, had earlier issued a circular to universities asking them to have a mix of arts and science subjects to help engineering students find employment opportunities. “Companies want students who can do multitasking,” Reddy said.

Each subject or course would be given some credits. On an average, students would need 180 to 200 credits to complete an engineering degree. Also, the university has decided to have no less than 90 working days per semester. The end semester examinations in domain subjects would account for 75 per cent credits and the remaining 25 per cent would come from class tests and teacher assessments.

The varsity is also introducing a number of elective courses. Students, after meeting the mandatory credit requirement in the course, would still opt for other courses. Though credits would not be given, they would be mentioned in the memorandum of marks. The first year syllabus would be common to all branches of engineering course and the emphasis would be on humanities, social sciences and management subjects.

According to him, the core engineering content would be about 40 per cent, humanities and social sciences 10 per cent, pure sciences 15 per cent, electives about 25 per cent and project work the remaining 10 per cent. Also, it would be mandatory for all students to attend all workshops, he said adding that the university had earlier launched English communication laboratories to train students in functional English.

JNTU is also implementing the suggestion from Nasscom, the voice of the Indian software industry, not to allow campus interviews till the last semester of the final year of the four-year degree course. This would allow the colleges more time to groom students better for the real world.

Earlier, the companies were allowed to conduct the interview in the third year of the course. With a job in hand, many students took the final year lightly this affected their career growth as they fell short of industry expectations. Also, their poor performance at office reflected in the appraisals. “There was intense competition among the IT companies from 2003 till recently. They put pressure on the university to give them early slots for selecting students even as they where in the second semester of the third year,” said JNTU placement officer K Eshwara Prasad.