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From relaxing attendance norms, exam schedules, lowering the average marks for passing, rationalising the number of credits to complete a course, bringing in a ‘no-termination’ policy to introducing sports admissions and giving students longer vacations to de-stress, major academic reforms have been brought in by top Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the last two years to reduce mental pressure on students, which often leads to suicides on these campuses and has forced premier technical institutes to review existing policies.
These IITs include top first generation institutes like IIT-Madras, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Roorkee and most recently IIT-Guwahati, where two students committed suicide within a month and another in April this year.
Most of these policy changes were effected in the aftermath of the pandemic, a period when a large number of students at IIT campuses took extreme steps such as suicide.
In 2024, eight student suicides have already been reported from various IITs, including three in Guwahati, two in Kanpur and one each in Delhi, BHU and Roorkee. All these IITs are first-generation, except IIT-Guwahati, which is one of the older IITs but is not considered first-generation since it was established in the 1990s. All of these are top-ranked institutes.
In July 2023, the Ministry of Education (MoE) had told the Lok Sabha that of the 98 student suicides in centrally-funded institutions, 33, the highest, were reported from IITs.
Following a series of suicide incidents in these IITs, students began protesting on campuses demanding ‘systemic’ and ‘structural’ reforms in the functioning of the institutions, which eventually forced the IITs to take notice and make policy changes.
What are these reforms?
IIT-Guwahati has assured students that it will consider relaxing the 75 per cent compulsory attendance rule and bring more “flexibility” in existing academic policies. The move comes after three days of massive protests following the alleged suicide of a BTech student on campus on September 9.
Academic changes can only be implemented through the Senate, which is the highest decision-making body of any IIT for all academic policies. Many IITs, including IIT-Delhi, have now started involving student representatives who are part of this process.
From this academic session, IIT-Delhi has relaxed the overall CGPA (cumulative grade point average) criteria – an index of a student’s academic performance, reflected across the duration of their entire course. This means students can now obtain a bachelor’s degree by clearing all the required courses – a significant policy change brought in to address mental health issues.
The institute has also made changes to the restart and termination policies, meaning it will allow students to progress academically while keeping them on probation. So, in principle there will be no termination on this basis.
In December last year, IIT-Delhi set up an ‘Academic Progress Group’, which comprises faculty members and student mentors to assist students struggling with backlogs and extended degrees. The institute identifies such students from each department and guides them throughout the programme.
In exceptional cases, the institute has also formulated a policy to allow students to stay with a family member on campus, as well as reserve hostel seats for those pursuing extended degrees beyond the regular semester duration, to help them complete their degrees.
After two suicides in January this year and one in December 2023, IIT-Kanpur has formulated a ‘no-termination policy’ for postgraduate (PG) students in the first semester. The policy has come into effect from the 2024-25 academic session.
Last October, IIT-Madras, which has been the top-ranked IIT in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) for six years in a row, changed the grading system for research scholars, allowing students to grade their supervisors and provide feedback on their guidance.
The worst-affected campus in 2023 will be IIT-Madras, where five students have committed suicide in a period of six months.
It is also the first IIT to introduce sports excellence admissions. This was the first year for admissions and five national champions joined the campus.
A senior faculty member who is spearheading academic reforms at one of these IITs said, “We must review the way IITs function and redesign the system to suit the current times and times. The rules that were in place two decades ago cannot be applied in the same manner. Initially, at least the older IITs had students only from the upper middle class and mostly from high-income families, but now that education has reached even the rural and most backward states, we have students from every corner. We have to make the system flexible so that everyone can join.”
However, as suicides continue, students are still questioning whether these reforms are enough and are demanding a more open and free student-teacher relationship. This was one of the demands made by students protesting at the IIT-Guwahati campus last week.
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