Examining the Factors Contributing to Student Suicides in IITs

Context

Several recent student suicides in premier institutes have pointed to an underlying problem that requires attention. 

Various Factors of Student Suicides in India

• High Competition: A direct consequence of this astronomical salaries blindness is the extreme competition to get in.
• Missing Emotional Attachment: Their coaching years, spanning their early teens, keep them isolated from social and moral aspects of cause and effect, from the give and take of human relations, and even from the idea that there may be other ways of measuring human value.
  • They are taught only one measure of worth, namely success on the entrance exam. 
• Astonishing Image: In the public consciousness, IITs are famous for jobs, not for education. The press reports astronomical starting salaries, not excellent teaching. 
  • However, only a tiny percentage of JEE candidates will get in, and only a tiny fraction of those will earn astronomical salaries. 
• The Promise of High Returns: Parents may put their children through this, because no other stream and college offers such an early guarantee of a reasonable career outcome. 
  • Example: They spend their early teens being soldiers instead of adolescents, dreaming typically of “computer science at IIT Bombay” followed by “one crore plus”. If they end up studying in other less ranking colleges, they think they have failed. 
• Comparison & Pressure: With the ever increasing competition race and poor placement prospects they face their own set of troubles within the imperfect system.
  • Also, their parents usually understand little beyond comparing starting salaries.

Way Forward

• Cooperation & Actions by Institutes: By student volunteers who watch out for troubled students, counsellors and psychiatrists to help these students, extensions granted to students for their degree completion and tutoring for troubled students.
• Understand the Differences: There is a need to help parents, students, and the world in general understand what an IITian’s realistic prospects are, and what a career can be.
• Engagement for Real Understanding: Engagement with the press is a must to describe actual careers and cut the hype, with parents to help them understand more. 
• Student-Specific Provisions: There must be career offices, not placement offices. There is a need for smaller classrooms, where teachers know individual students again. 
  • There is a need for kind and wise adults on campus whom the students can chat with.

Conclusion

The institute is a place of learning, not a placement agency. When expectations are realistic, when viable alternatives are recognised and valued, and when stakeholders have more faith in education itself, perhaps the unhappiness in our campuses can begin to fade.