Dual Degree (BTech/MTech) Program in Computer Science Engineering

Dual Degree (BTech/MTech) Program in Computer Science Engineering

In the proposed program, the students will be admitted through JEE, and are expected to take 5 years to complete. Both the degrees or B.Tech, for those students who do not meet the academic requirements for the award of M.Tech. degree, to be awarded at the end of 5 years or whenever the requirements have been completed thereafter.

Similar programs are already in place in various departments of IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, and IIT Kharagpur. All these four IITs have a dual degree program in Computer Science & Engineering. Several universities abroad, including MIT also have started similar programs in Computer Science and other disciplines.
Motivation

The need for this program has been felt in recent years with declining strength of PG programs. With the boom in economy, the salaries for engineers, particularly in the area of computer science, have skyrocketed, and are many times the MTech stipend. Furthermore, the huge demand in software industry for software engineers have started hiring most of the graduates from institutions that traditionally provided inputs for MTech program.

The situation implies that it is unlikely that we will be able to attract good students in required numbers to our MTech or PhD programs. For similar reasons, it is also very unlikely that we can attract reasonable quality graduates to work for us as research engineers. The fallout of this is that in Computer Science, with the current setup, we will have little research manpower.

The proposed program has been designed to make it attractive for a good student to do an MTech, and thus contribute to the research efforts of the department. The student benefits by getting an MTech degree with just one year of extra effort, thereby saving at least six months. The popularity of similar programs can be judged by the fact that IIT Bombay has steadily increased its intake in five-year dual degree program, and now more than one-third of the students admitted through JEE are in such programs.

Good quality MTech students are also expected to give a boost to undergraduate education, since they can help undergraduates in labs, and interact with them as teaching assistants.

Dual-degree program is being proposed instead of an integrated 5-year MTech program, as the BTech degree is the hallmark of IITs, and without offering this, the interest in the program will be low. Integrated 5-year programs don't seem to have succeeded in other IITs also.

Curriculum
The curriculum for the dual-degree program is roughly same as the combined requirements of the BTech and MTech curriculum. All requirements such as core courses, HSS, ESO/BSO, etc. will be adhered to. Since there is a reduction of six months in the time, a small amount of reduction from the combined requirements (mainly BTP requirement) is proposed. All this is consistent with the generic course structure approve by the Senate for dual-degree programs. There is one small change we are proposing here. In the summer term after the 8th semester, we are proposing an option between the thesis units and the summer training. This will allow students to work in a research lab or in industry. This exposure will be good for the student. The thesis supervisor and DPGC will decide whether a particular place for summer training is appropriate from the thesis point of view, and whether the student should be permitted to proceed on summer training or stay at IITK and work on thesis here itself.
Program Structure

1. The proposed curriculum is as follows: (A complete curriculum for all 5 years is given in Section 5.)
2. First three years: Identical to the existing BTech program.
3. 7th semester: 1 HSS course, 4 Departmental Electives (at least one PG elective).
4. 8th semester: 4 PG Electives and 4 units of MTech thesis.
5. Summer semester: 4 units of M Tech. Thesis OR Summer training.
6. semester: 1 PG elective and 12 units of MTech thesis.
7. 10th semester: 16 units of MTech thesis.

Since an Under Graduate Review Committee (UGRC) is looking at the curriculum for all BTech programmes in the Institute, and is likely to suggest modifications to the same, we can modify the dual-degree programme, if needed, suitably after their proposals are approved by the Senate.