Academic stress contributes to 76 per cent of the major stress and discomfort of first year students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, according to a survey conducted by the institute in April this year. The survey was held after Darshan Solanki, a student from Ahmedabad allegedly died by suicide on the campus on February 12 this year.
After the survey findings, the institute declared discontinuation of branch-change policy at the end of the first year. Some other recommendations include no direct Fail and Repeat (FR) grade to first year students, no academic activities during weekends, no lecture after 5pm, recording attendance and sending an alert to parents if it is low.
“According to the survey responses, academics, specifically competition, is the biggest reason of stress among students but how and who decided that it implies solely branch change is unclear,” stated Insight, the student media body of the institute published a report analysing the changes on Tuesday.
An interim report submitted by a panel probing Darshan case had cited his “deteriorating academic performance” as a possible cause, after which the institute formed Academic Stress Mitigation Committee (ASMC), co-convened by professor Kishore Chatterjee and professor Sundar Vishwanathan. The committee was tasked to study reasons that might be causing stress among first year students, following which the committee floated the survey to gauge reasons for stress among first year students.
The survey received 350 responses of which 212 cited excessive competition as the biggest reason. Other reasons include difficulty in grasping the course content (166) and insufficient help from teaching assistants or instructors for understanding the course (144). While reasons falling under academic basket are seen to be more than administrative or social causes, a significant number of responses (151) mentioned poor quality of food in the hostel mess as one of the reasons.
Whereas 131 responses also shared lack of interaction with seniors as a concern. Following the survey and month-long work, the ASMC made few recommendations to reduce the stress of first year students. Apart from discontinuation of the branch change facility, other recommendations include no direct FR grade to first year students.
An IIT official explained, “Students scoring lowest get an FR grade, which means they have to repeat the course. There is an option for other low scorers who get an FF, which allows them a chance of re-exam to pass the course. Now all low-scoring first year students will first get FF, allowing all this chance of passing the re-exam. However, failure in re-exam will lead to an FR grade,” Darshan had received FR grade.
Professors will now have to communicate the minimum requirement of passing at the beginning of the course. More professors will be allotted to first year courses, considering the huge strength of students. There will be no lectures after 5 pm and no academic activity during weekends and public holidays.
Half-semester and semester-end exams will be combined for first year students so that they have time and not get disheartened with bad performance in half-semester, which is generally scheduled in over a month after the academic year begins. Another important recommendation includes recording of attendance and alerting parents if it is deemed low.
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The Insight article claims that there was no direct question about the branch change in the survey and it was “only inferred indirectly from the survey and professors’ own experience”. According to students, reduction in stress seems possible with the discontinuation of branch-change policy. But “this stress is also not very simple to quantify. It is not fair to assume that all students join IIT-Bombay with the intention to change their branch”, read the article.
Dean Academics, Professor Avinash Mahajan, however, clarified that the survey was only a part of the work done by committee that included several brainstorming sessions, informal interactions with students and inputs from student representatives. Based on the work, the ASMC submitted a few recommendations to the senate, all of which were not approved.
The ASMC also suggested that the institute should follow the policy of only two grades in the first year — Pass or No Pass, a practice followed by some institutions abroad. However, this was not approved by the Senate after a long debate as the institute does not want to bring a lot of changes in one go.
