IIT JEE, AIEEE & NEET COACHING CENTRES OF KOTA.

 

Kota in Rajasthan is a coaching factory for students. It is very popular for coaching and annually about 150,000 students join the 13 large and 50 smaller coaching centres there. Coaching centres are the economic base of Kota generating about Rs 7000 crores annually for the city’s economy.  

Students come here for getting coached in IIT-JEE, NEET & AIEEE.

The foundation of the coaching industry at Kota was laid by V.K. Bansal in the 1980’s who was an Engineer at the JK Synthetics factory. He began his teaching career by giving maths tuitions to local students. Slowly his students started clearing the IIT exams. In 1986 when a student called Sanjay Arora topped the IIT Exam Kota came into the limelight. Bansal had 13 of his students cracking the IIT in 1990. In the mid 1990’s when the JK Synthetics factory was closed several Engineers joined the Bansals classes for teaching.

With the success of Bansal’s classes many, big Corporates in education have set up their own coaching centres at Kota taking the student intake to as much as 2,50,000 students a year. 

Currently Kota is home to 9 major coaching giants; 

Allen, Resonance, Bansals, Motion, Unacademy, Physics Wallah, Career Point, Akash and Sarvottam. 

Obviously a curriculum based on cracking competitive exams based on rigorous drilling rather than assessing the students' minds is faulty and places great stress on their minds. The students who cannot cope, feel intense pressure so it is no wonder that till the year 2017, 57 students have committed suicide at Kota. These suicides accelerated in the succeeding years.

Of the 1 million students who take the IIT JEE exam only 10,000 qualify for the 23 IIT’s. Of the 2 million who take the NEET exam, only 140,000 get a seat at a medical college.

Following are the figures of those students who got selected in the year 2022 in IIT JEE.

16 lac students qualified for the JEE advanced 2022. Of that 16335 students could make it to the IIT’s. Of this 2184 students or 13.4% are from Rajasthan alone with most of them coming from Kota.

In the year 2022, the IIT selections from various states are shown below:

1.     Rajasthan                 2184

2.     UP                            2131

3.     Maharashtra             1747

4.     Telanagana              1644

5.     Andhra Pradesh       1428

Coaching centres give students a gruelling schedule of 18 hours a day for 7 days a week without any time for leisure. They have fortnightly exams with marks and rank in the exams being the most important issue for a student, putting intense pressure on them to perform. The problem further intensifies when middle-class families take loans for the student to study at the coaching centres as they are expensive and they cannot afford it.

If a family takes such a loan and the student is not able to perform due to lack of ability that would create a big guilty feeling in them crushing them altogether and putting them under immense pressure and helplessness. Mostly it is those students who break down and commit suicide. 

A big coaching centre like Allen has 50 psychiatrists and counsellors on the campus but even that is of no use due to the intense pressure on the students. Moreover, the annual fees range around Rs 150,000 a year, and on top of that the boarding and lodging also has to be taken care of. Even at a conservative estimate, the student expenses are taken as Rs 1,20,000 per year then the annual expense for his family on education would be Rs 2,70,000 per student.

In the year 2023 alone in Kota 27 students have committed suicide unable to bear with the pressure. Perhaps lots of pressure comes in from unrealistic parents who cannot assess the ability of their children and push them to achieve the moon. That is when the students break down because they love their parents but their ability is just not enough to achieve the wishes of the parents. 

These suicides have brought in legislation from the Government this year that students younger than 16 years cannot be joined in coaching centres, as well as the Guidelines for Registration and Regulation of coaching centres. That has drastically cut the fresh intake of students to Kota by as much as 50,000 or about 30% and the city of Kota is really feeling that pinch.

Kota institutes have teachers with a salary range of Rs 10 lacs to 25 lacs and Elite teachers who draw Rs 1 crore plus. Obviously the teachers would be squeezed now due to lowered income.