Mumbai: The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT-Bombay will introduce a BSc Economics programme starting in July.
A press release from the institute on Tuesday said the four-year programme was to diversify the academic programmes on offer at IIT. “We have social sciences courses at the MPhil and PhD levels, but undergraduates only had to take a few compulsory economics classes. This is the first full-fledged programme. An economics course is already on offer at IIT Kharagpur and Kanpur, but we took our time in developing the course because we wanted to gain critical mass and learn from the successes and failures of the curriculum as it developed. We also wanted to develop a multidisciplinary programme,” said Professor D. Parthasarathy, head of the department.
The programme will have 26 seats, admissions to which will be conducted through the JEE (Joint Engineering Exam) - Advanced, to be held this Sunday.
“Unlike other ‘vanilla’ economics programmes, this programme will be 60% economics, with the rest being science, engineering, social science, and compulsory ethics courses,” said Mr. Parthasarathy. Selection to the course will take place in late June-early July during the course counselling held for qualifying students.
“The social sciences department has built academic excellence in a number of areas, including economics. Students will be well prepared to contribute to addressing the issues being faced in the increasingly complex national and global economic environments,” said Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT-Bombay.
