Student deaths in India’s coaching hub spotlight ‘pressure-cooker’ academic culture: ‘I’m sorry mum and dad’

India’s education coaching hubs, such as Kota, have become big business as students face pressure to perform in a fiercely competitive job market

Observers say parents need to stop seeing medicine or engineering as the only paths to success, given the limited opportunities available

Reading Time:5 minutes

Students in Kota, India, going for coaching classes. The city has highly competitive cram schools with a reputation for helping students crack university entrance exams. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 2:00pm, 16 Dec 2023

Aspiring medical student Gaurav is spending his second year away from home, living in a hostel room close to the coaching centre where he studies for hours on end in the small city of Kota, in India’s northern Rajasthan state.

The 19-year-old from the nearby state of Uttar Pradesh has already failed the national entrance exam to get into medical college once, and is not so sure if he will be able to “crack it” on his second try.

“I was hopeful because I was a topper [top of my class at school], but now I don’t know if I’m good enough. There are so many students here smarter than me,” Gaurav said, requesting a pseudonym to maintain anonymity.

Medical students sit for an examination at a university hall in Kolkata, India. Photo: Shutterstock

Kota has transformed into a student hub over the past few decades, building a reputation for getting students into top state schools. Every year, around 200,000 students, some as young as 13, travel to the city to enrol in its coaching centres and prepare for entrance exams for India’s top medical and engineering universities.

Most of them come from middle-class or low-income families, and see studying at Kota as a chance to break into elite institutions and realise promises of a career as a doctor or an engineer in a fiercely competitive job market.

But the past decade has shed light on the dark underbelly of India’s cutthroat academic culture, revealing the immense pressure that students endure in Kota’s cram schools to try to achieve success.

The city has recorded more than 100 student suicides over the last 10 years, reaching a distressing peak in 2023 with at least 26 deaths reported in a single year.

“Every time there is news of a student dying, you are no longer surprised. We all understand why,” Gaurav said. “We just keep our heads down and keep studying.”