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FIVE YEAR INTEGRATED PROGRAMMES (FYIPs)

Punjabi University Patiala has been running several five-year integrated courses where students are admitted after 12th standard, and they can continue all the way up to post-graduation. These courses are being re-vamped and re-cast into a new frame-work, wherein inter-disciplinarity in approach and exposure to research, will be key components. The courses will not be tied to a single department but, instead students will experience a multi-faculty environment. Courses will be started in the Sciences and Humanities streams, involving multiple faculties.

Backdrop

Punjab University Lahore had an excellent Integrated Masters programme, which nurtured several talented graduates including Nobel laureates Professor Har Gobind Khurana and Professor Abdus Salam, and the programme has survived through the times. Several Central universities have successfully been running Five Year Integrated Masters programmes. The IITs along-with their B.Tech. programmes have sustained FYIPs for several decades and all the IISERs have FYIPs in Science as their flagship programme.

More recently, IISc Bangalore has also launched an FYIP in different areas of Science. Primarily, the focus of all these programmes has been Science & Technology. The need of the hour is to broaden the ambit of these programmes and run FYIPs in a wide range of academic disciplines.

Unique Niche of PUP

PUP provides a unique ambience for such Integrated Programmes. The University was established in 1962 with a strong mandate to promote Punjabi language, literature and culture. In the decades since its inception, the University has diversified its education portfolio and has emerged as a key institution for imparting high-quality education in the areas of life sciences, physical sciences, medicine, engineering and technology, business studies, law, social sciences, humanities, languages, education, information sciences, arts and religious and cultural studies. Locating these undergraduate programmes within the PUP campus will ensure that these programmes can flourish under the umbrella that the campus of a university provides. All departments in the PUP campus will provide a “hands-on” research experience for the undergraduate students enrolled in such programmes, which will give them a broader perspective on the state-of-the-art and the current challenges in their respective subject areas. Therefore, PUP is eminently suitable for hosting such FYIPs.

Multi- and Inter-disciplinary Approach

The boundaries between traditional academic disciplines are becoming porous in today’s world, and current endeavours are becoming increasingly inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary in nature. The proposed FYIPs at PUP are a concrete initiative in this direction. These programmes are not tied to a particular department and will in fact have teaching faculty drawn from various departments. The course structure and syllabi have also been designed with unique opportunities for these undergraduates to take up “open electives” and “open courses” drawn from a plethora of University courses.The vision of these programmes dovetails very well with the recently unveiled National Education Policy of the Government of India.

Skill Sets of Graduates

The programmes have been envisaged as a seamless entity offering degrees in the following streams of Sciences and Humanities : Physical & Chemical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Mathematical & Computational Sciences, Social Sciences, Languages, and Arts. The salient points are described below:

• The course structure of these FYIPs will be 3+2.
• Within each stream of the FYIP, the first year will be common, and is to be treated as the “foundational year” in the chosen stream.
• The first two years of each FYIP will consist of core courses of components of that program and some elective and open elective courses that can be chosen from any stream.
• Credits which are to be earned compulsorily will be decided by a particular FYIP stream.
• In the beginning of the third semester, a ‘Major’ will allotted to the students as per their interest and merit.
• In the open courses slot, at least 12 credits must be done from a different stream altogether.Further, in the open courses slot, at least 12 credits must be done from the same stream, but in a subject area different to the chosen Major.
• Each stream will offer courses that are designed only for students from other disciplines.
• There will be an exit option after the third year, where the student graduates with a B.A./B.Sc.(Honours School) degree.
• There will be a strong emphasis on tutorials, teacher-student interactions beyond theclassroom, quizzes, and self-learning.

Details of the programme