The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras is introducing three new Master of Arts (MA) programmes programmes in Development Studies, English, and Economics. The new MA courses are being offered by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences with the objective of increasing the intake and the pool of candidates who can apply for these programmes. The programmes will be offered from the academic session 2023, the IIT Madras said in a statement.
The application process for the MA programmes will begin from March or April 2023 and the classes will commence from July 2023. Instead of Humanities and Social Sciences Entrance Examination (HSEE), IIT Madras will take admission to the two-year MA programmes on the basis of a soon-to-be-announced entrance examination.
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"The Institute is expanding the scope of the MA programme by adding Economics to the already existing streams of Development Studies and English Studies and offering all the three streams as two-year programmes instead of the current five-year integrated MA programmes," the IIT said.
There will be 25 seats for Indian students under each stream. The programmes will also be made open to international students on a supernumerary basis.
"IIT Madras is hopeful of attracting a more diverse set of candidates by making the MA programmes available after graduation from varied streams," it said.
The institute further 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.
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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.
Highlighting the major impact of this new initiative, Professor V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “The restructuring of the MA programme is 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, engineering etc. Such type of a 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.”