Restore option to change branch after first year: IIT-B students

Mumbai: The decision by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay to discontinue the option given to BTech students to change their branch in the second year was based on an internal student survey conducted in April, in the aftermath of Darshan Solanki’s death by suicide in February. Students now say the institute’s decision was taken hastily and should be rolled back.

The survey findings showed that a majority of first-year student participants attributed their stress levels to academics. The survey was conducted after IIT-B formed Academic Stress Mitigation Committee (ASMC) that was co-convened by professors Kishore Chatterjee and Sundar Vishwanathan. The findings of the survey were released on Tuesday in the inhouse ‘Insight’ blog and magazine run by students.

The blog written by the Insight editorial team states that the decision to discontinue branch change was taken even though the survey did not have any questions regarding the same. According to the blog, the committee felt that a reason for excessive competition was the possibility to change branches at the end of the first year depending on results. This was based on the committee members’ experiences in the institute and their informal interactions with the students. No official opinions on branch change were sought by the committee, it said. The editorial claims that the branch change was a crucial part of a student’s first year, either because of their own aspirations or those of their peers. The blog said, “The ASMC aimed to study reasons that might be the cause for stress among first year students- whether academic, administrative or social. However, it is important to note that the academic section did not have questions pertaining to the academic stress due to branch change.” Incidentally, IIT Jammu and IIT Hyderabad removed the branch change policy in 2019 and 2021 respectively.

The formation of ASMC was announced by IIT-Bombay director on March 6, on the instruction of central education minister regarding stress mitigation in the institute. Darshan Solanki, a first-year chemical engineering student at the institute, died by suicide on February 12. The incident had sparked a huge controversy after his parents alleged that their son was a victim of caste discrimination on campus.

In the survey, the institute asked students to list reasons for stress and discomfort and provided them with 13 options of which only five were related to academics. Students could tick as many options as they wanted. The results showed that 212 (60%) of 350 first year students marked that excessive competition was a major reason for stress followed by difficulty in understanding course content (166) and even insufficient help from teaching assistants (151).

The blog also stated that only 25% of the first-year batch had filled the survey and even among those, there is a clear skew towards people with higher Cumulative Performance Index (CPI) - 58% of students who responded scored CPI of 8 to 10.

A first-year student from IIT-Bombay, said, “I joined IITB considering that they have branch change option at the end of first year but now I need to continue with the current branch in which I was enrolled. I withdrew the admission from IIT Delhi to get into IITB. Many others like me really want the branch change option back in the system.”

Despite repeated attempts, the institute officials were unavailable for a comment.