The Coaching Apocalypse: Do we really need them?
Kota's suicides and repeated exam paper leaks raise a difficult question: is India's coaching culture solving a problem or creating one? As pressure mounts for education reform, many argue the real issue isn't coaching: it's the exam system itself.
In Kota, young people hanging from ceiling fans, consuming poison, jumping from hostel windows. Over hundreds of student suicides in the last decade in this single city alone—the suicide capital of competitive exam preparation.
Sporadic leaks in the NEET exam in some places in 2024 and 2026, leading to re-NEET. Question papers reached coaching institutes. The National Testing Agency, supposed to be guarding India's most important exam, failed completely.
The question is simple: do we really need coaching institutes?
How We Got Here
Coaching institutes started as a solution. Schools weren't preparing students for competitive exams. Parents desperately sought help. The system worked. NEET toppers came from coaching. Results were visible.
But something changed. Coaching is no longer a supplement. It is education. A student now does 6–7 hours of school, then 4–5 hours of coaching, then homework at midnight. This isn't education. This is turning children into exam-solving machines.
And like all machines optimised only for output, it became ruthless, negligent, and corrupt.
The Real Problem
Coaching institutes profit from desperation. A middle-class family spends lakhs per year to prepare one child (fees, accommodation, travel). The poor cannot afford this. The rich don't need it. Coaching has made education more unequal, not less.
Institutes are structurally incentivised to cheat. Legitimate teaching takes time. Leaked exam papers guarantee toppers. Why would they resist? Their entire business depends on producing visible results.
The Kota suicides tell us something crucial: the system creates psychological pressure that becomes unbearable. A 17-year-old believes their entire future depends on one exam, taken on one day. The stress is intentional—anxiety fills coaching seats. Fear sells courses.
Thirty-six students died in Kota in 2023 alone. The city has become infamous for young bodies found hanging in hostel rooms. Yet coaching continues to expand. The deaths are treated as individual tragedies, not systemic failures.
Simple Solutions That Actually Work
Instead of fixing coaching, we should fix the exams that created coaching.
Option 1: Multiple Ways to Enter University
Stop relying on a single NEET or JEE. Let universities choose their own entry methods. Some can use board exam scores + interviews. Others can use aptitude tests. Some can use a combination. This removes the pressure cooker and naturally kills the coaching industry.
Option 2: Continuous Assessments
Instead of one exam, students take 10-12 tests throughout the year. Success becomes about learning consistently, not acing one day. Coaching becomes unnecessary because there's no single test to "crack."
Option 3: Skill-Based Entry
Evaluate students on what they can actually do—problem-solving, creativity, communication, research—not multiple-choice pattern recognition. Medical schools could look at lab work and case studies, not just theory exams.
Option 4: University Autonomy
Let institutions compete to attract students. Some might focus on high scorers, others on potential and creativity. This diversity ends the monopoly of coaching. Different universities would have different criteria, making coaching irrelevant.
Option 5: Portfolio-Based Selection
Students build portfolios—school projects, community work, research, competitions—that universities evaluate. This rewards real learning, not exam coaching.
Most developed countries use these methods. They have lower stress, better student selection, and fewer failures.
Option 6: One Aptitude Exam for All (The CAT Model)
Here's what could actually work: replace NEET and JEE with a single aptitude test—similar to CAT—that tests reasoning, logic, data interpretation, and verbal ability. Not subject knowledge. Not rote memorisation. Pure thinking ability.
This one exam, administered once a year, would be the gateway to all universities and colleges. Medical, engineering, law, management—everyone takes the same test. What makes this different is that you cannot coach aptitude. You cannot memorise your way through logical reasoning or data interpretation. You either think or you don't.
Coaching institutes would collapse overnight because their entire business model depends on making students regurgitate subject content. An aptitude exam selects for actual intelligence and problem-solving capability—the traits that make real doctors, engineers, and leaders.
CAT has already proven this works. It produces people who build companies and solve problems, not people who are good at taking exams. One test, nationwide, impossible to crack through coaching, fair to all. This is the nuclear option that kills coaching without needing regulation or oversight.
What Must Happen Now
If we keep coaching, we must regulate it like schools:
Real fire safety inspections with penalties that hurt
Teacher qualification requirements
Maximum student-teacher ratio
Fixed, transparent fees
Unannounced audits with consequences
But honestly? Regulation won't work. Coaching institutes have proven they cannot be trusted with young people's safety or education.
The Moral Core
A society that watches hundreds of students die by suicide in one city permits the national exam itself to be stolen—that society has lost its way.
Coaching institutes aren't the root problem. The exams are. NEET and JEE created a system where success depends on memorisation and speed, not understanding. Coaching institutes simply exploited that system brilliantly and ruthlessly.
They profit from broken dreams and parents' desperation. They charge enormous fees. They operate unsafe buildings. They push students toward suicide. And they do all this legally, because nobody has the political will to stop them.
The Real Question
Do we need coaching institutes? No. We need to ask why we've built a system where 30-40 million teenagers feel they must spend their teenage years in pressure cookers, away from families, learning to fear rather than think.
That system isn't serving students. It's serving an industry worth thousands of crores.
The Way Forward
The tragedies in Kota should be our wake-up call.
We can decentralise university entry. We can strengthen schools. We can create multiple pathways to higher education. We can evaluate students on skills, not just exam scores. Countries far poorer than ours have done this.
Or we can keep defending a system that kills our children—literally and psychologically—so that coaching institutes can earn profits.
The choice should be obvious.
It's time to ask: what are we really trying to achieve? If it's making sure the most capable students get into good universities, there are better ways. If it's making education accessible to all, coaching is the opposite.
Real reform means ending the stress of NEET and JEE. Everything else is just rearranging chairs on a sinking ship.
In Kota, young people hanging from ceiling fans, consuming poison, jumping from hostel windows. Over hundreds of student suicides in the last decade in this single city alone—the suicide capital of competitive exam preparation.
Sporadic leaks in the NEET exam in some places in 2024 and 2026, leading to re-NEET. Question papers reached coaching institutes. The National Testing Agency, supposed to be guarding India's most important exam, failed completely.
The question is simple: do we really need coaching institutes?
How We Got Here
Coaching institutes started as a solution. Schools weren't preparing students for competitive exams. Parents desperately sought help. The system worked. NEET toppers came from coaching. Results were visible.
But something changed. Coaching is no longer a supplement. It is education. A student now does 6–7 hours of school, then 4–5 hours of coaching, then homework at midnight. This isn't education. This is turning children into exam-solving machines.
And like all machines optimised only for output, it became ruthless, negligent, and corrupt.
The Real Problem
Coaching institutes profit from desperation. A middle-class family spends lakhs per year to prepare one child (fees, accommodation, travel). The poor cannot afford this. The rich don't need it. Coaching has made education more unequal, not less.
Institutes are structurally incentivised to cheat. Legitimate teaching takes time. Leaked exam papers guarantee toppers. Why would they resist? Their entire business depends on producing visible results.
The Kota suicides tell us something crucial: the system creates psychological pressure that becomes unbearable. A 17-year-old believes their entire future depends on one exam, taken on one day. The stress is intentional—anxiety fills coaching seats. Fear sells courses.
Thirty-six students died in Kota in 2023 alone. The city has become infamous for young bodies found hanging in hostel rooms. Yet coaching continues to expand. The deaths are treated as individual tragedies, not systemic failures.
Simple Solutions That Actually Work
Instead of fixing coaching, we should fix the exams that created coaching.
Option 1: Multiple Ways to Enter University
Stop relying on a single NEET or JEE. Let universities choose their own entry methods. Some can use board exam scores + interviews. Others can use aptitude tests. Some can use a combination. This removes the pressure cooker and naturally kills the coaching industry.
Option 2: Continuous Assessments
Instead of one exam, students take 10-12 tests throughout the year. Success becomes about learning consistently, not acing one day. Coaching becomes unnecessary because there's no single test to "crack."
Option 3: Skill-Based Entry
Evaluate students on what they can actually do—problem-solving, creativity, communication, research—not multiple-choice pattern recognition. Medical schools could look at lab work and case studies, not just theory exams.
Option 4: University Autonomy
Let institutions compete to attract students. Some might focus on high scorers, others on potential and creativity. This diversity ends the monopoly of coaching. Different universities would have different criteria, making coaching irrelevant.
Option 5: Portfolio-Based Selection
Students build portfolios—school projects, community work, research, competitions—that universities evaluate. This rewards real learning, not exam coaching.
Most developed countries use these methods. They have lower stress, better student selection, and fewer failures.
Option 6: One Aptitude Exam for All (The CAT Model)
Here's what could actually work: replace NEET and JEE with a single aptitude test—similar to CAT—that tests reasoning, logic, data interpretation, and verbal ability. Not subject knowledge. Not rote memorisation. Pure thinking ability.
This one exam, administered once a year, would be the gateway to all universities and colleges. Medical, engineering, law, management—everyone takes the same test. What makes this different is that you cannot coach aptitude. You cannot memorise your way through logical reasoning or data interpretation. You either think or you don't.
Coaching institutes would collapse overnight because their entire business model depends on making students regurgitate subject content. An aptitude exam selects for actual intelligence and problem-solving capability—the traits that make real doctors, engineers, and leaders.
CAT has already proven this works. It produces people who build companies and solve problems, not people who are good at taking exams. One test, nationwide, impossible to crack through coaching, fair to all. This is the nuclear option that kills coaching without needing regulation or oversight.
What Must Happen Now
If we keep coaching, we must regulate it like schools:
Real fire safety inspections with penalties that hurt
Teacher qualification requirements
Maximum student-teacher ratio
Fixed, transparent fees
Unannounced audits with consequences
But honestly? Regulation won't work. Coaching institutes have proven they cannot be trusted with young people's safety or education.
The Moral Core
A society that watches hundreds of students die by suicide in one city permits the national exam itself to be stolen—that society has lost its way.
Coaching institutes aren't the root problem. The exams are. NEET and JEE created a system where success depends on memorisation and speed, not understanding. Coaching institutes simply exploited that system brilliantly and ruthlessly.
They profit from broken dreams and parents' desperation. They charge enormous fees. They operate unsafe buildings. They push students toward suicide. And they do all this legally, because nobody has the political will to stop them.
The Real Question
Do we need coaching institutes? No. We need to ask why we've built a system where 30-40 million teenagers feel they must spend their teenage years in pressure cookers, away from families, learning to fear rather than think.
That system isn't serving students. It's serving an industry worth thousands of crores.
The Way Forward
The tragedies in Kota should be our wake-up call.
We can decentralise university entry. We can strengthen schools. We can create multiple pathways to higher education. We can evaluate students on skills, not just exam scores. Countries far poorer than ours have done this.
Or we can keep defending a system that kills our children—literally and psychologically—so that coaching institutes can earn profits.
The choice should be obvious.
It's time to ask: what are we really trying to achieve? If it's making sure the most capable students get into good universities, there are better ways. If it's making education accessible to all, coaching is the opposite.
Real reform means ending the stress of NEET and JEE. Everything else is just rearranging chairs on a sinking ship.
