The Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT-Roorkee), after two decades has re-opened its doors for non-engineering students for its management programme.
IIT-Roorkee’s Department of Management Studies (DoMS) had started its classes back in 1998 and the first batch (1998-2000) had 57 students including seven international students.
The first ever batch of 57 students have 25 engineers while the remaining came from different backgrounds like science, management, commerce, art and pharmacy and some had joined with background qualifications like hotel management, BSc Agriculture and BSc home science.
But the induction of non-engineers was discontinued after the first batch itself and return after a decade this year.
Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director IIT Roorkee, said, “We feel it is important for today’s industry to hire candidates from heterogeneous backgrounds. This move shall help bridge the gap between the demand of skilled candidates from diverse academic backgrounds and the available talent pool“.
In the academic session of this year which started in July four non-engineering graduates joined the programme, making up almost 10% of the total first-year strength.
MK Barua, Head of Department (DoMS) of IIT Roorkee,said that the move is targeted towards facilitating collaborative learning and knowledge sharing.
From this non-engineering programme the engineering students get to know deeper about financial concepts from commerce students and the latter could make use of the former’s technical expertise. Similar experiences can be witnessed by cross-sharing of knowledge among other graduates.
“Here, the emphasis is on the importance of learning new emerging technologies for managers which is the demand of the technology-driven present times. It (DoMS) effectively provides the enabling environment and the infrastructure for building acumen and acquiring skills through inter-departmental projects,” said a BCom graduate who is currently pursuing MBA at DoMS.