Bangalore: A new curriculum, which will address the gap between theory and practice in the IT Industry, is understood to have been approved in principle by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), along with software body Nasscom and IT industry experts.

Apart from insisting upon the improvements in the problem-solving abilities of engineering students across disciplines, the curriculum, to be introduced at the under-graduate level, will attach importance to understanding of the context besides plain theory, reports Business Standard. AICTE, which is the apex body responsible for the development of technical education system in the country, has also proposed to introduce a credit system for all the eight semesters. Moreover, the weightage will be given, based on the requirement of the IT industry in the core, elective and basic sciences subjects.

The AICTE will hold a meeting of the vice chancellors (VCs) of all the technical universities across the country in September this year to discuss in detail these changes which have been introduced in the model framework. Following this, the new curriculum will be circulated to all the VCs to be implemented in a phased manner, according to a highly-placed source in AICTE. However, the exact date for the rolling out of the new curriculum is yet to be decided.

The new curriculum framework has been prepared in close collaboration with Nasscom and the IT industry. AICTE had also taken into consideration the proposals given by the IT industry, while preparing the model curriculum.

"We have worked closely with AICTE to introduce a new curriculum. The new curriculum framework has been accepted by the AICTE. Some universities are looking at it and trying to work it out," said T V Mohandas Pai, Director, HRD, Education & Research, Infosys Technologies. "It places a lot of emphasis on principles and context apart from algorithm thinking, database management and problem-solving techniques. All these skills are required for the IT industry as well as the heavy engineering sector," he added.

The new curriculum attaches to it a huge importance as only one out of every four engineering passouts is fit to be employed in the IT industry in the current scenario.