New Delhi, March 9: The Indian institutes of technology will restructure their courses to meet the new challenges of higher education.

The human resource development ministry today announced a course structure for the three leading IITs of Kharagpur, Mumbai and Kanpur from the academic year 2005-2006. Similar changes will follow in the other four IITs.

The ministry?s step will lead to an increase in student intake and will also give them more flexibility in making career choices.

The UGC has also been harping on dual degrees in colleges and universities for the same reason. UGC chairperson Arun Nigavekar has underlined that a student should be allowed to have a BA degree in tourism and history so that she has better job options.

The decision for restructuring the IIT courses was taken at a meeting with the institute directors in January and then given proper shape at a meeting later this month.

IIT Mumbai will launch a five-year dual-degree programme combining two courses ? a BTech (engineering physics) and an MTech with nanoscience as specialisation.

A five-year dual degree course with B.Tech (Hons) in any branch of engineering and a masters in business administration will be started in IIT Kharagpur. The institute will also have a five-year integrated masters in science, statistics and informatics, a five-year integrated MA in Economics and a two-year masters in statistics and informatics.

The expansion will also provide for an increase in the intake of undergraduate students in the IITs.

IIT Guwahati has also decided to increase its student intake in the BTech and design programmes through the joint entrance examination.

The ministry is also planning to strengthen the linguistics departments in the IITs. Officials say the post-WTO regime will require language specialists in Japanese, Spanish, Russian and French. IITs are still restructuring their linguistics courses.