Last updated on July 29th, 2024 at 11:59 am
The IITs have made the move to de stress its students as six Indian Institutes of Technology have scrapped the branch-change option offered to students at the end of the first year. This brings to nine the total number of IITs that have discontinued the practice.
The branch-change option at IITs allows students to switch to a new engineering stream at the end of the first two semesters, provided they meet the desired cut-off pertaining to the Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) score in the first year. Each branch in each IIT typically has its own cut-off scores to accept students from other streams.
Starting this year, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Dhanbad, IIT Dharwad, IIT Mandi and IIT Bhubaneswar have stopped this practice. IIT Bombay, IIT Hyderabad, and IIT Jammu discontinued it in 2023, 2021 and 2018, respectively.
IIT Madras
At IIT Madras, ranked first among all IITs in the National Institutional Ranking Framework, the decision was prompted by the most recent periodic review of the institute’s curriculum by a task force, which is typically focused on improving and modernising what students learn.
Why IITs decision taken back?
Dr Prathap Haridoss, Dean (Academic Courses), IIT Madras, mentioned that actually only 10 percent or less are able to avail this option while nearly 50 per cent of them think that they will change their branch after the first year.
The institute has other option available which a students can avail such as free electives and double majors. “Through these options, we are hoping that students will not be demotivated and can now join the programme of their choice and excel in the chosen subjects,” Chakraborty said