IIT-B to offer three-year exit option with BSc

Mumbai: The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) is set to offer an exit option after three years with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in engineering from the academic year 2023-2024.

Last year, the institute gave students the option to opt out after the third year as a pilot, following which 15 students received their BSc degrees.

Professor S Sudarshan, deputy director of IIT-B, said, “The IIT council has decided to start this facility so that students who are unable to complete the four-year BTech degree course will be able to have an honourable exit with the new degree.”

Sudharshan was speaking at a press conference organised to celebrate ‘Three Years of the National Education Policy 2020’ at the Press Club, Mumbai.

Professor Avinash Mahajan, dean, academic programmes, IIT, Sona Seth, deputy commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Mumbai Region and Ketan Patel, joint director, ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship, were also present.

Elaborating on how the NEP has made way for flexibility in higher education, Sudarshan said core courses and a number of electives that are comparable to the number of core courses at IIT-B allow flexibility to students. “Students therefore have wide freedom to choose courses across disciplines. Apart from flexibility, new disciplines beyond traditional lines envisaged by the NEP have been encouraged at IIT, such as School of Management, School for Entrepreneurship, and others,” he stated.

Speaking on the early exit, professor Mahajan said, “To get a BSc degree, students need to complete 160 credits during three years of time. If any student can complete at least 30 credits in his or her core subject, they will get a specialised degree in the subject. If a student who selected the option for exit scores overall 160 credits, out of which 30 are from computer science, then the student will get a degree of BSc in computer science.”

IIT-B has also mandated that students choose one humanities subject in each year of their courses. “To reduce academic pressure on students by reducing it to one subject per semester in the first year, I also decided to give credit for the extra classes that IIT is conducting for students, who are weak in English for the first year,” Sudarshan added.

Kendriya Vidyalaya to start pre-primary classes

Sona Seth, deputy commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) Mumbai Region, stated, “The NEP is a robust document that keeps abreast of the latest pedagogy. KVS introduction of Balvatika (pre-primary classes) as outlined in NEP 2020 resulted in 49 KVs having permanent buildings on a pilot basis in the session 2022–23 and 5,477 children admitted in all three classes of Balvatika. In the coming academic year, 20 new Balvatika will be introduced across the state.”

While explaining the implementation of the NEP in KVS, she further added that the age of admission in Class I was revised to 6+ years from the academic year 2022–23 in all KVS. “Tracking of the progress of students in classes 1, 2, and 3 in terms of the attainment of Lakshya’s under the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat initiative is being monitored by recording the same through a web-application linked to the Personal Information Management System (PIMS),” Seth said.