Suicides in Kota: Students Need Career Counseling

Yet another young life lost. The average is more than one per month. Why is it happening.

The simple logic is that there are too few seats in our IITs (for engineering), or too few seats in good (read, government) medical colleges. The quality of education in the next level institutions is much worse. Parents have high aspirations. They push their wards to go to a far off place without the family support. They realize that the competition is extremely tough for those few seats. The students are afraid that they aren't going to come up to the expectations of their near and dear ones. Under that stress, sometimes an unfortunate extreme step is taken.

How do we handle this. Of course, we must provide counseling to these students (I really think all schools should provide counselors in 11th and 12th class at least). But what else.

In the discussion, it is assumed that the stress is the result of too few seats in IITs and the next level institutions being much worse. While the statement is true, I disagree that this is the reason for the stress. I have myself talked to several coaching guys a few years ago when my son was in 11th class. A lot of students coming to coaching have no hopes of cracking IIT. And the coaching institutions tell them that it is important to do well in JEE Mains since that is a ticket to admissions in next level of institutions, including NITs. And stress happens when they realize that they aren't likely to be in the top 50,000 ranks, thereby even the next level institutions that they were targeting weren't quite within the reach.

Now, you may argue whether the stress is for being within the top 10,000 or within the top 50,000, it is all the same and the solution will be the same. I think the two situations are very different and therefore the solutions are very different.

My basic premise is that the quality of education that a top 10,000 person gets is much better than the quality of education that a 20,000 rank student gets. But the gap between the institution that a 20,000 rank student studies in and a 1,00,000 rank student studies in isn't very high.

If the assumption is that suicides happen because the gap between IITs and the next level is too high, then the solutions proposed would be a major restructuring of the education system. Let us expand IIT education. Let us put in a lot more money in NITs. Let us allow more autonomy to top private institutions and allow them to charge more fees. It could even be to hide the difference between IITs and the next level. Let us not talk about the placements, for example.

But if we were to believe that the suicides happen when the student feels that they can't even get 1 lakh rank in JEE Mains, then the solution is just career counseling which is doable now and we don't need a major restructuring of the education system. I mean, telling the students about other options that they will have if they were to get 1L rank or worse, which will be only marginally worse than what they could have been admitted at 40-50 thousand rank. This requires changing perceptions while the earlier assumption required changing reality.

There are so many institutions which provide a good quality education but aren't well known and one is unlikely to believe in their quality just because one person says so. The right thing to do, in my opinion, is that the student after the JEE Mains result is out, should seek information from various sources about the possible colleges to get admission at that level of performance. Go through their websites, get whatever information they think is important, and select 10 colleges. Take the risk and include 2 such colleges about which you are unsure but someone tells you that they are good but unknown. And now visit all these 10 colleges even if they are in 5 different cities. Remember the cost of coaching in Kota would be much more than this visit of 10 campuses and this is the most important decision of your career.

So, basically, what I am suggesting is that if there is career counseling available to students in coaching (and indeed, in all schools across the country) whereby the student is told of several options at various ranks, told that the gap between the well-known colleges and the next level ones isn't too much, encouraged to do research on colleges and shortlist, and visit to finalize the college, I think we can reduce the stress. We don't have to wait for the country to restructure entire education to save lives.

At least in Engineering and Computer Science, they can be told of online resources that they can use to get quality education even if they get admitted to lesser known colleges. They can be told of programs such as BSc of IIT Madras which they can do along with their other degrees. Overall, a student with 1-2 lakh JEE Mains rank has many good options in life and career counseling will make a difference to his/her stress levels..