3.5K pursue IIT Madras online courses as 2nd degree

Chennai: Janani D, a student from SRM Easwari Engineering College, passed out with two degrees. She says her first degree from the college provided theoretical knowledge, while the second, an online degree in data science and applications, from IIT Madras provided her technical knowledge. These two degrees helped her secure a job in her first interview. As many as 3,500 students from across Tamil Nadu are pursuing the data science programme as a second degree, including 2,234 students from city campuses. "The college and faculty were helpful. I was able to do projects and assignments for both courses simultaneously and completed them in four years," Janani said.Two batches from IIT-M have graduated with a Bachelor of Science (BS), and around 36,000 students are pursuing this online programme. "We focus on skills after teaching fundamentals. The course also has multiple exits, including foundation, diploma and degree level. In this course, they can acquire skills required for full-stack developer and data scientist job profiles. It will help them during the campus placements," said professor Vignesh Muthuvijayan, in-charge of the data science programme, IIT-M. A year ago, UGC allowed students to pursue two degrees - one in regular and another in online mode simultaneously. However, due to lack of approval from state universities, many colleges said students were interested only in short-term skill-oriented online programmes."Many students who have enrolled in online programmes joined our college last year. However, after a few months, many of them quit their online degrees as they found that pursuing a regular degree is more demanding," said Lilian Jasper, principal of Women's Christian College. "More students pursue online skill-based courses as colleges can allocate time for these courses within the course," said S Vaidyasubramaniam, vice-chancellor of Sastra.