Ahmedabad University doesn’t have departments within its Schools and Centres, instead we have different programmes offering a whole host of Majors for the students to choose from. A Major is an area of specialisation within a degree programme (for example, History or Chemical and Environmental Engineering or Economics or Accounting). The student chooses a Major at the time of entering the University but has the flexibility to change the Major as per the prescribed policy. We also allow our students to come into the University with an undeclared Major. Each Major requires 60 or more credits and the total requirements for the degree will 120 credits or higher depending upon the number of credits a particular Major requires. Usually, a Major has the following structure – a School Core, a Discipline Core, Discipline Electives, School Electives and Internships. Being an Honours degree a Thesis or Capstone project with a writing component is also there for Arts, Sciences, Management and Commerce programmes. For Engineering students, it is a project.
The Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Science (BS) Honours programmes and the Majors in the liberal Arts and Sciences that constitute them are an entry point for careers in broad and diverse areas. They are 21st-century programmes: rigorous, contemporary and contextual. They are interdisciplinary, and encourage experiential ‘self-learning’ in order to establish how best to ask the right questions and conduct research, and what methodology to use in a particular circumstance. In line with the other programmes at Ahmedabad University, this represents a rethinking of higher education and what it can achieve. As the world changes and artificial intelligence and big data make complex moral and political demands on our understanding; as digital technology remakes music and the possibilities of art; as questions about the future of the global environment spring up at the interstices of applied science, social sciences and philosophy, these programmes will seek to act as a bridge not only between the liberal arts and sciences, but between academic and public intellectual life.