The Kharagpur IIT has started a dual degree programme that fuses technological knowhow with entrepreneurship training.
The five-year engineering entrepreneurship course is aimed at encouraging students to develop special products based on innovative technology.
“This is a unique course under which the students will get a BTech degree in any branch of engineering and also a masters degree in entrepreneurship. The idea is that the students pursuing this course will be job generators, not job seekers,” IIT Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya told The Telegraph.
Students will study all courses leading to the B.Tech degree in engineering. Additionally, they will be exposed to all aspects of creating and running an enterprise, including finance, accounting, management, marketing and production and human resource management. They will have to come up with a product idea and develop the technology for that. The idea should be innovative and market-oriented, Acharya said.
On graduation, the students will not go for campus placement and will instead pursue entrepreneurship. Thirteen students have taken admission into the course this year.