THE NEW BSc

Several universities are recasting the traditional BSc into richly multidisciplinary programmes with research embedded into the curriculum and teaching.

- Pritha Roy Choudhury

Kartik Tiwari, a student of Ashoka University, has just completed his three-year BSc Honours programme with a major in physics and a minor in philosophy. Such a combination of subjects was possible only in a university like Ashoka, Tiwari said.

"My primary interest was in physics and philosophy from high school itself. Both my parents are masters in Philosophy. I was always sure that wherever I ended up studying after high school, it would be a place where I could pursue both of these academic domains," he said.

Aakash Mahesh Kessani opted for commerce after completing Class 10. Studying science, he feared, would inevitably lead to pressure to write the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering or the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medicine. Despite his choice of stream in high school, the idea of becoming a chartered accountant or a company secretary did not appeal to him either. Kanravati University, near Gandhinagar in Gujarat, came to the rescue, he said.

Despite his background in commerce, Kessani was allowed to join an undergraduate BSc programme in computer science. The programme covers artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data science.

"I was also not sure but had heard about it. Then I came to Karnavati University and met the professors after some initial discussion and seeing my interest in AI and ML, I appeared for the entrance test. Today I am studying BSc. Computer Science with specialisation in artificial intelligence and machine learning in the United School of Computational Intelligence (USCI)", said Kessani.