The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), in a recent report has made many suggestions like, students enrolled in any engineering discipline will have to study ’emerging courses’ as part of their curriculum. For the relatively newer streams, including computer science, electrical, and electronics engineering, these ’emerging courses’ will be mandatory. Emphases will be given to interdisciplinary engineering courses moving ahead.
AICTE has recognised the following as some of the emerging courses:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Embedded SW
- Internet SW
- Mobility
- Analytics
- Cloud
Institutes will be allowed to launch new courses only in the emerging fields. Further, newer combinations such as engineering with biology will be introduced including subjects like computational biology, biotechnology, biomedical, mechatronics, environmental engineering etc, the advisory body has also recommended, reports indianexpress.com.
These recommendations are aimed at addressing the ‘skill gap’ in engineering and training the next generations of engineers to be ‘future-ready’, states AICTE. The greater issue that the Indian higher education institutes are however staring at is to find experienced and expert faculty in these fields.
“We have held 200 faculty development programmes in the past one year in these areas and aim to hold 500 programmes in the coming year. In each programme, 40-50 members are trained for three to five days. Of course, they cannot become experts over a few days, they will also be given access to platforms where they will be able to learn on their own. We are engaging faculty to become life-long learners,” said Anil Sahasradudhe, chairperson, AICTE.
The process, he informed, will continue for several years. While there are nine sectors in emerging fields, teachers have to choose one subject. These sessions are provided by faculty from IITs, industry players and foreign-based researchers, informed Sahasradudhe.
IITs have already started providing AI courses, mostly with industry partnerships. Vineeth N Balasubramanian, head of the department of AI at the IIT-Hyderabad, believes India cannot wait for faculty training to reach every corner of the country before starting teaching these courses. IIT-Hyderabad is one of the firsts to have started an undergraduate degree in AI in India.
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