Tuesday experts (June 10, 2025) emphasized the importance of acquiring multidisciplinary skills for expanding career opportunities and world views, building character and supporting empathy and intellectual humility.
They spoke to the webinar on “beyond the borders: how multidisciplinary learning is preparing a complex world” organized together by the SRM Institute of Science and Technology and Hindu.
Vinay Kumar, a professional Chancellor at the SRM Institute of Technology, said that national educational policy provided the largest filler to multidisciplinary education in India. “While multidisciplinary education is still in the development phase and is not fully developed, each institution comes with its own method of providing multidisciplinary courses,” he said. Such education also expands job opportunities because companies are looking for trainees and workers with different types of skills and problem solving, he added.
ARUNA SANKAANARAYANAN, attending the Faculty at the School of Education at AZim University, said the disciplinary boundaries are artificial. It states that there are common features between disciplines that appear on the surface of the heterogeneous and have given an example of mathematics and art. “Both are engaged in shapes, size, symmetry and proportions,” she said. She talked about how people with multidisciplinary skills succeeded in their career.
“Countries Ramakrishnan made Ph.D. in physics, moved to biology and eventually won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Similarly, Steve Jobs performed a caligraphy course, which later helped him design the Macintosh logo,” she said.
Regarding whether online learning and distance education can help students pick up multidisciplinary courses, Mrs. Sankaranarayan said that while online courses are useful, many institutions can offer multidisciplinary online courses. Mr. Kumar agreed that online education has limited programs. He said that distance programs exist, but may not be guided.
The speakers also spoke of the role of technology in facilitating multidisciplinary learning and opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI). You can see this webinar at
Published – 10 June 2025 22:51 is
