With the National Education Policy 2020 mandating the transformation of all colleges and universities into multidisciplinary institutions by 2035, they are the flavour of the season

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Multidisciplinary universities are the flavour of the season. The new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has mandated that all specialised or single stream colleges and universities including undergrad colleges, should begin the process of transforming into multidisciplinary universities and complete it by 2035. The Kasturirangan Report (2019) which was substantially translated into NEP 2020 made a strong case for multidisciplinary universities.

Somewhat belatedly it advocated that India’s large number of engineering and technology undergrad colleges which because of their high quality of education have been conferred university status, should begin the process of introducing liberal arts, science and commerce and other study programmes (business management, law, medicine etc) and small, single stream, colleges in a given area could “cluster” to coalesce into universities.

This makes good sense as a university by definition should offer access to a whole universe of higher learning making it easier for students to select a major from a particular stream, and combine it with minors from other streams to acquire well-rounded higher education. Thus an engineering student can study business management simultaneously. This would avoid wastage of time and learning involved in their first completing a four-year engineering programme and subsequently signing up for a two-year MBA programme with a B-school as is the current practice. It’s not uncommon for duly qualified engineers to transform into marketing managers of consumer goods who don’t put their engineering education to any use at all.