Some are putting sports on the daily activity menu, while others are tracking psychological wellbeing and daily attendance, apart from having psychiatrists and psychologists on hand to keep depression at bay.
Academic and industry experts told ET the problem goes beyond just the coaching factories. A paucity of engineering and medical seats in quality institutes, allied with relentless societal expectations to ‘succeed’- which puts youth under unbearable pressure as they chase their dream to be an engineer or a doctor – are the main causes, according to them.
Amitabh Jhingan, partner at EY-Parthenon, said the mix of students has changed in recent years. “Earlier, Kota attracted highly motivated students with strong academic orientation, who could easily crack the entrance tests,” he said. Now, over-ambitious parents are sending wards who’re not inclined towards such pursuits by temperament to these coaching mills, convinced that medicine and engineering are the only professions worth aspiring for. They also include students who don’t have a conventionally strong academic orientation, or are motivated by a calling that’s not considered traditional.
Then there’s the supply-demand gap in the number of seats available and students competing for them, according to V Ramgopal Rao, vice-chancellor, BITS Pilani and former director, IIT Delhi.
Mental health in focus
“This situation has arisen due to a cocktail of reasons like ambitions of students, pressure from parents, lack of a financial model for institutes to expand and overselling of dreams by coaching centres,” said Rao.Mentoring students to pursue their passion should start early, at the school level, said Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman of National Educational Technology Forum and former chairman for All India Council for Technical Education.
Coaching centres such as Allen, Career Point, Motion Education and Physics Wallah say they are focusing on adding more measures to address suicidal tendencies among students. The interventions include an increase in professional help from counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists for early identification of depression.
Kota’s Motion Education, which has 20,000 students enrolled for entrance exams such as JEE and NEET, has recently started using its app to track wellbeing. “We have now made it mandatory for all students to fill up the questions in our app that help us gauge their mood,” said managing director, Nitin Vijay.
In the past week, Motion Education made biometric attendance mandatory in the morning and evening. “This is to identify those students who are not coming out of their rooms,” said Vijay.
Most coaching centres in Kota, especially after a nudge from the Rajasthan government, are conducting psychometric tests to identify students who need help and roping in psychologists and psychiatrists.
Career Point, a rival of Motion, with 1,200 students in Kota, is keeping the class size small, at 60 students, said founder Pramod Maheshwari. Career Point also has sports activities such as basketball, volleyball, football and squash for students living on residential campuses.
Physics Wallah recently created a committee to determine optimal class schedules and reduce the workload, according to its offline chief executive, Ankit Gupta.
Studying at a Kota coaching institute for the NEET or IIT entrance exam costs upward of Rs 3 lakh a year. The tuition fee is about Rs 1 lakh, while other expenses start from Rs 2 lakh and include the rent and food.
(With inputs from Brinda Sarkar in Bengaluru)
