Removal of Branch Change Policy: Behind the Curtains

Introduction

IIT Bombay removed the branch change policy for UG students admitted from 2023 onwards. This decision was taken to reduce the academic stress among the students in the first year. A statement from the Institute read (quoted in Hindustan Times),

 “This decision was made based on the observation that the pressure to get higher grades to earn a branch change was causing stress to several students, while only a few benefit from the change of branch.” 

This decision was one of the suggestions made by the Academic Stress Mitigation Committee (ASMC) co-convened by Prof Kishore Chatterjee and Prof. Sundar Vishwanathan. Insight delves into the ASMC’s operations, decision-making process, and the lesser-known accepted proposals by the Senate; offering our perspective on the procedure, as illuminated by discussions with student representatives and institute officials.

Important Dates:

Announcement of formation of ASMC by Director: 6th March 2023

Senate Meeting: 12th May 2023

Press release announcing Branch Change being discontinued: 12th May 2023

Confirmation of the decision by General Secretary of Academic Affairs (UG) on Webmail: 13th May 2023

Stress Mitigation Committee

The Director, IITB announced the formation of the Academic Stress Mitigation Committee (ASMC) on 6th March 2023 via Webmail. This was in response to the preliminary report from the committee on the Darshan Solanki case, citing academic stress as a major cause of concern. The committee (ASMC) consisted of professors from various departments but did not include any student representatives.

The ASMC aimed to study reasons that might be the cause for stress among first-year students – whether academic, administrative or social. They concluded that the major reason was academic stress (details below). They evaluated several possible causes, including the academic policies, structuring of courses by professors and evaluations among others.

The committee was given a month to come up with suggestions so that their recommendations could be immediately implemented for the batch joining IIT Bombay in the Autumn 2023 semester, shared the ASMC Convener. Some details on how the committee arrived at this conclusion and its recommendations are presented below.  

Survey

A survey was floated by the GSAA-UG among the freshmen population, in order to gauge the major stressors among them, on 13th April 2023. This survey was originally designed by the CSE DAMP Coordinators to gauge the status of students of their department. Professor Sundar Vishwanathan, the co-convenor of ASMC and a professor in the CSE department, decided that the survey could be extended to the entire first-year population rather than only the students from the CSE department. The survey, with a few changes by the ASMC, was sent to the GSAA-UG, who then shared it on the student notices mailing list.

As mentioned above, the options provided in the survey to gauge reasons for stress could be put in baskets of academic, administrative and social causes; however, it is important to note that the academic section did not have questions pertaining to the academic stress due to branch change.

The survey received 350 responses, and from them a conclusion was drawn that the major reasons for academic stress among students were (in decreasing order of number of responses):

1. Excessive competition during their first year
2. Difficulty in grasping the content of the courses
3. Perceived insufficient help from the teaching assistants and instructors

Deciphering ASMC’s Perspective on Branch Change Policy Removal

The committee felt that a reason for excessive competition was the existence of branch change at the end of first year. This was based on their experiences in the institute and their informal interactions with the students. No official student opinions on branch change (either through common forums or just by conversations with student representatives) were considered in the committee to the best of Insight’s knowledge. The committee also took note of the removal of the branch change policy at other IITs including IIT Jammu (from 2019 batch) and IIT Hyderabad (from 2021 batch).

“The students are under pressure from their families and peers to land a good branch. Even after getting admitted, this indirect pressure doesn’t seem to decline, and students still have hopes to change to a “better” branch. Students usually come to know whether they will be able to branch change or not after the mid-semester examinations in the first semester. At the end, only 120 students out of 1400 students are able to branch change, which is a miniscule number. But the disappointment of not being able to branch change stays with a majority of students”

• Prof. Kishore Chatterjee, Convener, ASMC

Through their informal interactions and experience with students, the professors on the committee noticed that multiple students mentioned being tested on basic sciences (Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics) in both their high school exams and the JEE. The students felt that the competition on the basis of these subjects again in the first year was not justified. 

The ASMC felt that due to the new curriculum change along with the addition of new minors and IDDDPs, the students have plenty of opportunity to explore their interests outside of their parent branches and even gain degrees in them (minor or IDDDP). In their opinion, the removal of branch change policy would help to reduce competition in the first year. At the same time, they felt this would not significantly compromise the opportunity to explore. The students would then be able to focus better on their studies while also giving them the freedom to try something new. To this end, Prof. Kishore Chatterjee informed us that the number of seats in minors and IDDDPs would be increased. However, at the time of publishing, Insight does not have information on how many seats are going to be added.

Senate Meeting

The Director chairs the institute’s Senate, which is the authority on all academic matters. The Senate comprises all the professors of the institute and a few nominated student representatives (General Secretary of Academic Affairs (GSAA) – UG and PG, Overall Coordinators of the Student Mentorship Program (SMPCs), and the Overall Coordinators of the Institute Student Companion Program). The Senate is responsible for controlling the maintenance of standards of instruction, education and examinations and other allied academic matters. 

On the day of the meeting (12th May), the only UG representative available to attend was GSAA-UG. The SMPCs were not present. This meeting was held offline and there is currently no provision for any Senate member to join online. The student representatives first heard about the changes proposed only through the agenda of the senate on 10th May, that is, 2 days prior to the meeting. The GSAA UG was consulted unofficially and according to them some things they discussed are present in the report but they were made aware of all the proposed changes only through the Senate agenda.

The purpose of the discussion in the Senate was about the proposals of the ASMC, to weigh their pros and cons, voice support or opposition to the recommendations, and also comment on the logistics of their implementation.

The meeting started with ASMC presenting their recommendations (listed in the section below) in front of the Senate. Discussions on these recommendations ensued and some of them were approved to be implemented for the next academic year. Among the two major changes proposed, the proposal to remove branch change going forward was approved. The second proposal was to have only PP/NP grades instead of the letter grades (AP, AA, AB..), for all first year courses as it is currently for the NOCS courses. However, this proposal was heavily debated and ultimately rejected; according to Prof. Chatterjee, this was because the institute did not want to rush into taking multiple large steps, and would reevaluate the need for this at a later stage.

Accepted Recommendations of the ASMC

For UG first-year students:

• Curriculum
  • Reduction of number of credits to 31-33 in each semester 
  • Combining related half semester courses to full semester courses (for instance, MA109 and MA111 have been combined to give a single course – MA105). The reason for this is that seeing a bad grade within the first 1.5 months may unnecessarily stress students, especially those who have not adjusted to the academic environment in IITB. Giving grades later allows students more time to improve their performance without getting disheartened due to an initial bad performance
  • Each department has the autonomy to choose the courses to keep in its curriculum for the first year, and can choose to only keep courses which they feel are relevant. The exceptions are courses like HASMED and Makerspace, which are compulsory for all departments. 
  • There should be multiple modes of evaluation and “best k of n” policy should be considered
• Instruction
  • No academic activities to be scheduled on weekends or Institute holidays
  • Professors are recommended to conduct classes and evaluation between 8:30 am – 5 pm only
  • If possible, more professors can be allotted to the first-year courses where the strength is huge – these professors will aid in administrative tasks as well as conduct tutorials and labs, but will not take the lectures
• Grading
  • Giving an FF grade initially instead of an FR to give the students a chance for re-examination – only if they are unable to pass the re-exam shall they be awarded an FR.
  • It is important to note that the existing rules regarding FF grade still hold: the maximum grade that can be awarded after the re-exam is DD
  • Attendance
    • Recording of attendance for first year students is mandatory
    • The summary of the attendance of each student will be sent to their parents periodically. In case attendance is deemed low, an alert message would be included with this report.
• Common across all years:
  • Professors should communicate the minimum requirements for passing at the beginning of the course

Insight’s Take

In this section we aim to put forward Insight’s views about the process followed.

We recognise that this is a highly complex decision with far-reaching implications, possibly also affecting a student’s decision to choose IIT Bombay through JoSAA in the first place. While a reduction in stress seems possible at first, 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. A student’s response to academic stress is also not easy to judge without comprehensive data from previous years to back it up. On one hand, this step may prove to potentially reduce the stress faced by first year students with regards to academics when they enter the institute. On the other hand, they may lose an opportunity that allows them to get a slightly better idea of their interests and try to change their branch after their first year, and not continue with the lesser-informed decision they made based more on their JEE rank.

“Branch change is so subjective that I cannot express an opinion about the decision without looking at hard facts and data, of which we have none. Every opinion without looking at data over multiple years is going to be a little biased.”

• a student representative who wished to be quoted anonymously

Due to it being such a complex decision, the opinions of the committee members, however informed and developed, should certainly have been aided by more concrete data on branch change. This data should ideally incorporate the effects of branch change on students’ lives in the institute, especially with regards to the stress v/s opportunity tradeoff. We can appreciate difficulties in gathering such high-quality data. The next best thing to incorporate student opinion would have been the presence of student representatives in the ASMC or their involvement in an official capacity (either by taking statements or being part of relevant discussions). Insight has learnt that the student representatives were given access to the ASMC’s report two days before the senate meeting, and we are aware that student representatives are part of the Senate; however, consistent involvement throughout the process would have allowed for more fruitful discussions, hopefully taking more student perspectives into account.

Survey

There were no direct questions about branch change in the survey, and as mentioned above, branch change was only inferred indirectly from the survey and from the professors’ own experience. According to the survey responses, academics, specifically competition is the biggest source of stress for the students, but how and who decided that it implies solely branch change is unclear. Another important point to note is that only around 25% of the first-year batch filled the survey and even among those, there is a clear skew towards people with higher CPI.

It would also be worth getting opinions of senior students who changed their branch, and even someone who had the option to but did not. The reason for this is that a first-year student would be expected to see branch change with a more aspirational perspective – either hoping to change their department or being stressed if they feel they cannot do so. Senior students would have greater context on the implications of (not) changing their branch and would have a more informed perspective on the associated stress (if any).

We strongly feel that there could and should have been more concerted efforts to incorporate voices of a more diverse group of students. A possible option could have been to make this a mandatory survey (similar to the mental health survey filled by all freshers).  

The argument given here by Prof. Kishore Chatterjee was:

“If the top students feel stressed because of competition then the students with lower CPI would definitely also feel it.”
While we understand the context behind this statement, we still feel that a decision of this magnitude should not be based on inferences like these and should ideally be backed by better quality data.

We must acknowledge at this stage that the ASMC was given a time frame of less than 2 months to discuss and study such a complex issue, and future efforts of this sort should ideally be given a longer timeframe to perform a more meticulous analysis.

Student Representatives

As mentioned before, the involvement of student representatives before the Senate meeting was minimal, with none of them being a part of the committee officially and only the GSAA UG being consulted unofficially for certain aspects (which, according to them, were brief, informal discussions). While we believe these conversations definitely allowed the GSAA UG to be more aware of the committee’s work and some of his suggestions were incorporated, an informal conversation does not allow anyone to voice concerns and opinions in front of the committee and their opinions are not included in the official records either. The student representatives in charge of the mentorship program for first years, the SMPCs, were not consulted at any stage (before the Senate meeting); their inclusion, in our opinion, is vital before making any decisions impacting first-year students.

Formally including the student representatives only in the Senate meeting, for a decision of this magnitude, is unsatisfactory and may not lead to a very informed discussion. The Senate meeting aimed to discuss the recommendations of the ASMC, and not ideate all possible reasons of academic stress and suggest counter-measures – that task was of the ASMC itself. The UG student representatives could have participated in more constructive conversations had they been involved with the committee in a larger role. The Senate is the last stage in this process, and only involving them here may make it difficult to have fruitful discussions.

Concluding Note

Branch change was a crucial part of a student’s first year, either because of their own aspirations or those of their peers. There are a spectrum of opinions regarding a topic as pervasive as this, and the student community was rife with discussion immediately after the decision was confirmed. We would like to emphasise that we (and most other members of the campus community) are not in a position to comment on whether the decision itself is a good one or not – a thorough understanding of its ramifications will only be gained by a continuous, comprehensive evaluation of students’ mental health and stress levels over the next few years, and a comparison with what the stress levels were in the past.

In our opinion, it is also important to see this decision in context of all of the other changes that have occurred in the UG academic set-up over the past two years. The new curriculum is aimed to provide increased flexibility, and the decision to increase minor and IDDDP seats is another step in that direction. Removing branch change was not the sole recommendation the ASMC arrived at – taken as a whole, the decisions to hold classes only between 8:30 am – 5:00 pm, limiting academic activities to weekdays, recommending a “best k out of n” evaluation policy – if implemented properly, should hopefully relieve some pressure off first-year students, giving them more opportunities to self-study, participate in extracurriculars, socialise or just relax.

What we have aimed to do is to inform the campus community of the procedure followed by the institute, and to give an understanding of how complex decisions like these are taken. In case you have any questions or concerns, or if you require any clarifications, please feel free to reach out to us through our socials or by email to insight@iitb.ac.in.

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Note to Freshers (2023 Batch onwards) from the SMP Overall Coordinators, 2023-24 :

This article talks quite a lot about why and how the decision to remove branch change would affect student lives. We (as the Heads of your ISMP Mentors) assure you that irrespective of branch change, you have come to an extremely robust academic system that has amazing opportunities for you to explore both within and outside your branch. 

To help keep your first-year stress free, SMP has always been assigning ISMP mentors as reliable seniors who are there to support you. Talk to them, and they will do their best to alleviate your concerns and help you tackle problems like the awesome seniors they are. In case you have branch-specific questions and your mentor is from a different branch, they would be glad to point you to another ISMP mentor who can help you through your concerns.

Your exploration of academics at IIT Bombay is dictated by what you want to do, and when you want to do it, more than any of your seniors at IIT Bombay — your batch is truly lucky to be facing a curriculum so flexible and diverse. Keep talking to your mentors and friends, take their help and explore both your branch and the flexible opportunities that this new curriculum provides.

Take your evenings to study, explore, exercise and relax in your first year. You have come to experience the best four years of your life and there are lots of new doors to open – you just need to have a small bit of patience and a whole lot of enthu!

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