More colleges could offer engineering courses in emerging fields like robotics, AI from 2021

New Delhi: Engineering colleges under the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will soon be able to offer courses in emerging fields -- artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and others -- from the academic year 2021-22. The council has sought a list of the new courses from institutions that were already offering them from 2020-21, and will add them to the AICTE's approval handbook from next year. Once done, the new curriculum will become official, enabling more colleges to offer the courses to students. The idea is to make students employment-ready in line with the new National Education Policy. Making the announcement in a circular dated 29 October, the AICTE said, "lt is seen that during the approval process 2020-21, many institutions have made use of this opportunity for introduction of new courses in the emerging disciplines approved by the council. We all understand that the introduction of more number of new courses in emerging areas or Interdisciplinary Courses would help the student community in their goal of employability or entrepreneurship and this is also stated in the new National Education Policy 2020."