Not just budding engineers,the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad,one of the six new IITs established last year,may soon be home to future doctors as well. The institute is working out modalities of a masterplan to set up a high-end medical school on its campus. While it hopes to offer MD degrees in two-three years,there are plans to start MBBS courses later. We have been planning this for a while and the ministers views on the same lines asking IITs to offer more disciplines worked as an impetus. The idea is to set up a medical school in about two years or so. We have just begun working on the plan, Prof U B Desai,IIT-Hyderabad Director,told The Indian Express. At a meeting with IIT directors earlier this month,Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal made the point that the institutes must expand their horizon. We plan to focus on biology in a big way. To be termed Bio X,the department will offer courses like bioinformatics,biotechnology and so on. Many of our courses require a lot of interaction with medical schools and students have to be usually taken to another city. With a medical school on campus,this will be taken care of, Desai said. Besides becoming the first IIT in the country to offer medical degrees,the institute also plans to set up a School of Liberal Arts which will offer courses in psychology,economics,social anthropology,linguistics etc. As of now,the IITs offer courses in mechanical,electrical and computer engineering. Many other IITs are already working on offering more than just engineering courses. For instance,IIT Kanpur is in the process of introducing music and performing arts in its course design,IIT Mumbai already offers Hindustani classical music,IIT Kharagpur runs a law school and IIT Madras too is working on setting up a medical school. The Yashpal Committee report on Rejuvenation of Higher Education,submitted to the HRD Ministry,also advocates the need for IITs to include courses other than engineering in their portfolios. The report says the institutes should be developed as models of all-round excellence like the MIT in the US.
