IIT Madras is one of the few IITs
that provide a high level of curriculum flexibility to the students in their
academic programmes. The institute offers electives that make up 40% of their
curriculum; the highest elective composition amongst those provided in all
other IITs. Students have the option to choose their subjects spanning different
disciplines and those pursuing the dual degree programme can also change
disciplines or specializations in the 4th and 5th years
of graduation. This level of flexibility was designed in the recent curriculum
revision of the 10 year academic plan of IIT Madras keeping in mind the demands
and development of students.

Prof Sivakumar, Student Affairs
Dean at IIT Madras, says, “I guess most IITs have allocated 1/3rd of
their academic composition to electives. 40% is just a tad higher than that.” Students
in IIT Madras who have experienced this change are glad to have wider options. “Since
I am doing a dual degree course, I have the option to change my discipline of
study after the 3rd year. I have an opportunity to explore a field
for three years, and if it does not suit/interest me, I can switch over to
another,” says Dheeresh, a 3rd year mechanical engineering student
at IIT Madras. However, what happens if the second choice of specialization
also doesn’t interest the student? The variety of courses at display in IITs
and the convenience to switch over from one to another may add to a student’s
fickleness.

IIT Madras is now planning to have
a curriculum division in a 50/50 proportion. This is expected to raise
flexibility in the curriculum and allow students more time to concentrate on
other activities outside class. They even wish to increase the number of
subjects provided to two thousand in the next 10 year academic plan. However, other
IITs do not find the idea of such wide flexibility suitable. Prof Anurag
Sharma, Academic Affairs Dean, IIT Delhi says, “We offer one third of our
curriculum as electives. We do not plan to increase that composition anytime in
the near future as any more options provided to students may sway their focus
away from their stream of specialization.” Ashish Agarwal, a student from IIT
Kanpur feels, “The core discipline will lose value if composition of electives
is increased. Optional and core subjects should not have an equal weightage.”

There have been several cases of
IIT students abandoning core engineering fields and transforming their hobbies
into a career (read article). However, whether or not this academic
experiment will work can only be discussed after few years of successfully
running the new curriculum.