K’taka adds 8 new courses in emerging areas in Polytechnic Diploma studies

Bengaluru: Karnataka government on Thursday began the admission process for the Polytechnic Diploma in the State with 8 newly added courses in emerging areas, and a new ”C20” revamped curriculum of the courses that earlier existed.

Minister for Higher Education, CN Ashwath Narayan said these steps are taken with a focus on increasing the employability of students and to align the courses with NSQF (National Skill Qualification Framework) and global standards to suit the current developments and demands.

The 8 new Diploma programmes offered by the Department of Technical Education (DTE) in emerging areas are Alternative Energy Technologies, Cybersecurity, Food Processing & Preservation, Travel & Tourism (including logistics management), Cloud Computing & Big Data, Automation & Robotics, Direction, Screenplay writing and TV production, Cyber-physical systems & Security.

They are being introduced in the colleges at Gauribidanur, Shiralakoppa, Kudligi, Rabakavi, Banahatti, Aurad, SJ Polytechnic of Bengaluru, Chennagiri, Koppa, Honnali and Kapu (Udupi), the Minister was quoted as saying by his office in a release.

Besides the newly added, 33 courses exist in the Polytechnic Diploma.

”Apart from this, in the 3rd year, specialization pathways will be provided in 12 subjects which include Data Science, AI & ML, Power Engineering, Renewable Energy, Industrial Automation & Industrial Electrician, Structural Engineering, Sustainable Built Environment, Infrastructure Engineering, Net-zero Buildings, IoT, VLSI and Embedded System, PCB Design & Fabrication and Medical Electronics,” Narayana explained.

The admission process has also been changed to enable students to walk into nearby Polytechnic and seek admission into the course of their interest.

Except for the select 26 Polytechnics (out of the total 87 govt polytechnics) where merit-based admissions are offered, students can walk into the remaining Polytechnics and get admitted on the first-cum-first basis into programmes of their choice, the release said.

The minister said DTE has designed new courses and a new C20 curriculum after extensive consultations with industry, academia, alumni and government. In addition to this, cues from the Diploma courses in countries like Germany, Newzealand, Australia, Singapore have been adapted.