IIT Madras offers MA programme to larger section of students

The prestigious Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) is targeting attracting a diverse set of candidates by opening up the MA programmes for those who graduate from various streams. The institute is expanding the scope of its MA programme by adding Economics to the already existing streams of development studies and English studies.

All the three streams will be offered as two-year programmes instead of the current five-year integrated MA programmes from the 2023 academic session.

The new MA programmes by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences are being offered with the objective of increasing the intake and the pool of candidates who can apply for these programmes.

IIT-M said 25 seats will be available for Indian students under each stream, while these programmes will also be made open to international students on a supernumerary basis. “The application process will commence in March/April 2023 and classes will start in July 2023. Instead of HSEE, admission to the two-year MA programmes will be made on the basis of a soon-to-be-announced entrance examination,” the institute said.

The restructuring of the MA programme is being done with an aim to make the same accessible to more students who have completed their bachelor degrees from multiple disciplines spreading across humanities, science, commerce, and engineering.

“Such a type of humanities and social science exposure is very much needed for the next generations of students to face and address different challenges posed by the modern world. This expanded list of MA programs will open-up new avenues of placement and employability as the students will be trained as domain specific experts with international readiness and national focus,” IIT-M Director Prof V Kamakoti said.

The unique aspects of the new programmes include evidence-based policy analyses, role of technology in shaping socio-economic development, data science and governance, engagement with contemporary issues such as climate change, sustainability, urbanization among others, the IIT-M said.

The course curriculum of the MA programmes will be restructured to include more contemporary subjects such as Economics of Innovation, Urban Planning and Development, Health Policy, Environmental Humanities, Climate Economics, Technology and Policy, and Computational Linguistics, among others, the institute added.