As artificial intelligence dismantles traditional barriers to knowledge and disrupts entry-level hiring across industries, a new question is emerging for young professionals: not what to learn, but what makes them uniquely valuable. IIT Jodhpur’s B.S. in Management and Technology is emerging as an early answer to this shift, and its first cohort of applicants suggests that Gen Z may be far more clear-eyed about the changing world of work than popular narratives give them credit for.
“The program was designed in direct response to a clear shift in the job market. As AI reshapes entry-level roles, the foundational skills required to be ‘hire-ready’ are evolving faster than traditional curricula can keep pace with,” said Prof. Avinash Kumar Agarwal, Director, IIT Jodhpur. “Flexibility, and the ability to connect management thinking with technological fluency, is no longer optional, it is the baseline.”
Perhaps the most telling observation from early admissions and counselling sessions came not from the students, but from the room dynamics themselves. While parents largely asked about logistics, exam schedules, campus visits, and routine timelines, it was the students who pressed for outcome-driven answers: internship access, placement pathways, and even tentative compensation packages.
This pattern directly challenges the widely circulated Gen Z narrative. Rather than drifting into their choices, applicants to the program are making calculated, self-aware decisions rooted in a clear understanding of their own strengths and gaps.
Among the program’s early admits is a third-year engineering student who, through years of extracurricular and leadership involvement, identified management as a personal strength, and is now using the program to formally build the knowledge base to match that instinct. Another admit, a first-year sociology student, is seeking to combine an understanding of human behaviour and psychology with management and technology, aiming to work at the intersection of the three disciplines. A third student was candid about having no intention of conventional employment at all, instead using the program to prepare to take over a family business, while leveraging the institution’s alumni network.
The program’s early reception adds weight to the broader promise of NEP 2020 – a policy built to enable flexible, interdisciplinary, and outcome-oriented higher education. If IIT Jodhpur’s first cohort is any indication, that vision is beginning to take shape in real time.
The programme’s design explicitly reflects NEP 2020’s vision for higher education, structured around multidisciplinary learning, flexibility in academic pathways, and a strong outcome-orientation. By allowing students to combine management, technology, and their own domain interests within a single degree, IIT Jodhpur positions this offering as a practical, on-ground expression of the policy’s broader intent.