IIT-B suicide prompts call for flexible five-year engineering degree

Following a student death at IIT Bombay, former director of IIT Delhi Professor V. Ramgopal Rao has highlighted a critical flaw in how India's premier engineering institutes structure their curricula. According to Rao, the current system of teaching all students at uniform pace is creating psychological distress, particularly among those who enter through intensive coaching but struggle with novel problem-solving approaches at the postgraduate level.

Rao's analysis suggests that even well-prepared students face difficulty when confronted with original questions that demand conceptual understanding rather than rote learning. The uniform pace of instruction fails to accommodate the diverse learning speeds of individual students, potentially contributing to anxiety and depression among the engineering student population.

To address this systemic issue, Rao has proposed converting the four-year Bachelor of Technology degree into a flexible five-year programme. This extended timeline would allow institutes to customise the pace of instruction to individual student capabilities, reducing time pressure and creating space for deeper engagement with material.

The proposal comes at a time when mental health concerns among engineering students have gained increased visibility. Rao's suggestion aims to fundamentally restructure how premier institutes balance academic rigour with student wellbeing, moving away from a one-size-fits-all instructional model toward a more adaptive framework that acknowledges varying learning trajectories among high-performing students.