Thursday, December 25, 2008

BITS Pilani : The true meaning of education

"Eventually it takes integrity of character to build something bigger than all fortune. Character that is built in a sprawling campus tucked away from the distractions of city life. Where students of life read between lines and theorems to realize true responsibility as human beings, to wield knowledge and bring about no less than a revolution, which ever path they choose to tread in life"

-- That’s what BITS Pilani believes. (From a rare Outlook advertisement of BITS)

The success of a university should be measured by the options and avenues it provides to its students, for them to learn and assimilate knowledge beyond books and beyond classrooms. Imagination, arts, languages, media and sciences are as important to engineers as technology. BITS fully understands that and unlike today’s namesake universities (or even the ones with huge names) believes that a student should have all such pathways in life, should involve in extra-curricular activities, should learn more than what a traditional engineer would learn.

Apart from all possible courses for traditional engineering branches and Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, Pharmacy and Management that a student from any branch in BITS can take (upon fulfilling the pre-requisites), BITS boasts of courses all the way from Gandhian Philosophy to Current Affairs. From Film Appreciation to Advertising, Effective Public Speaking to Creative Writing in Mass Communication, the students have enormous number of choices. There are courses like Film and Video Production, New Media, Creative Multimedia, Music, Contemporary India, Journalism, Aesthetics, Entrepreneurship, Commerical Law, Psychology, Drama, American Literature, etc., which are open for all students. There are regular workshops on topics such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Soft Skills etc, which provide the type of outlook to students that is not available in any other Indian university. BITS also has Centers of Excellence like the Center for Desert Development (CDD), Center for Women Studies, Center for Rain Water Harvesting etc, which are first of their kind efforts in India for promoting research in the respective fields.  (For a comprehensive listing of courses:

http://discovery.bits-pilani.ac.in/courses/body_oncamp_coursedescriptions.html)

It’s not a surprise then that BITSians are found not only at the top technology spots, but are also eminent authors, movie directors, animators, politicians, IAS, Army, police officers. In short, they are found in all fields of life since BITS–Pilani provides them with an unparalleled comprehensive and versatile education.