With NEP, engg students could be allowed minor, exit courses

MUMBAI: Biology and engineering may finally see the Chinese wall being broken down. This academic year, it might be possible for a student to pursue a programme in chemical engineering from the hallowed Institute of Chemical Technology in Matunga and pick a basic science course from Ruia College in its neighbourhood.
While there is some clarity on how the traditional autonomous institutes would usher in changes of the National Education Policy (NEP) in their programmes, a meeting between the NEP panel and the Directorate of Technical Education this past Saturday achieved some progress on the road forward for engineering education, especially on exit courses.
The NEP committee has decided to draw up the structure on how they would roll out flexibility in professional courses such as engineering. There are a total of 48 autonomous professional colleges that will roll out NEP this year. Experts say the engineering programme in its current form is the closest when it comes to NEP as it is already a four-year course and most tech schools have permitted students to pick minors from other streams, apart from the fact that there is an internship component embedded in the course.
The panel which met with technical autonomous engineering institutes has agreed to permit multiple entry and exists as also allow students to pick programmes from other streams such as taxation and entrepreneurship exits due credits will be awarded for the same.
“When we spoke to the technical institutes, we realised that most have more colleges under the umbrella of the same management. So, they will share faculty members and allow students to pick courses from their constituent colleges. The idea is to allow as much flexibility as possible so that students can pick the programmes of their choice and stitch their degree together,” said state NEP committee head professor S Karmalkar, former vice chancellor of Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).
More details will be revealed once the panel meets this week to develop structures and share best practices drawn up from other institutes. Once a model framework curriculum is developed by next week, details will be shared with students and candidates can accordingly take their admissions based on the recently released MHT-CET scores.
Earlier, there were plans to permit students to pick courses from various professional programnes like law or medicine, but that will not be possible this year. Close to 600 colleges and 13 public universities in the state will roll out NEP from the year starting July.