Academic Stress, Reason for Students Calling it Quits in IITs, NITs

Academic Stress, Reason for Students Calling it Quits in IITs, NITs

• NYOOOZ Chennai Thu,06 Aug 2015

Summary: Unable to cope with the system and stress could be the main reasons for the dropouts,” said an IIT Delhi professor. I am sure that they will respond to the government  of India soon,” Irani said in the Lok Sabha. She added, “Let me reiterate here the commitment of the government to ensure that within these IITs, we will ensure that the mechanism to deal with academic stress and the mechanism to help weaker students to strengthen themselves.

CHENNAI/NEW DELHI: More than 4,400 students dropped out of IITs and NITs in the last three years due to various reasons including “academic stress”, the government said on Wednesday and assured that corrective actions have been initiated.Once an IIT student drops out of his/her course at any point, the seat remains vacant till the end of the programme and no induction can happen since it is almost impossible to provide proper education considering the way the course is structured.In some IITs, students who have more than three to four backlogs during the first two semesters, find it difficult to pursue the remaining course and this might lead to dropouts, said S Sundar, chairman of IIT-JEE. Assuring that corrective measures have been initiated, Irani said through guidance and counselling, students facing emotional difficulties are identified and guided to professional counsellors for help.Though the number of IIT dropouts is growing every year, the IITs had preferred to opt for an ‘exit policy’ aimed at plugging seat vacancies that occur when students quietly drop out, instead of taking concrete steps to stop the dropouts.The Ananda Krishnan committee report on suicides in IITs also mentioned stress and inability to cope up with the system. 

183 - Counsellor availability to be accreditation factor

Counsellor availability to be accreditation factor

Ramya Kannan

Task force on preventing student suicides submits report

The Union Human Resource Development Ministry is likely to consider a proposal to give weightage to the appointment of a counsellor in colleges of technical education during the accreditation process, according to sources.

The suggestion has been made by Union HRD Minister Pallam Raju, said M. Anandakrishnan, former vice-chancellor of Anna University and chair, task force on preventing suicides in Centrally-funded technical institutions.

The members of the task force submitted their report to the Ministry on Thursday.

The report included suggestions to the institutions for setting up a dedicated system to cater to the mental health and counselling needs of the students.

A visible entity to provide the service should be established on campus, it insisted.

‘Great idea’

“We had a great response from both the Ministers, Mr. Raju and Minister of State Sashi Tharoor. It was during the discussion that this idea came up from the Minister.

“Though we had not mentioned it in our report, it certainly is a great idea,” said Dr. Anandakrishnan, who is also Chairman of the Indian Institute of Technology- Kanpur.

This would indicate the seriousness of the government’s intention to ensure that students receive emotional support while at college.

The Council of IITs, at its meeting held in September 2011, decided to constitute a task force to study the reasons for incidence of suicides in their institutions and to suggest remedial measures.

A total of 26 CFTIs, with a student strength of over 50,000 responded to the survey conducted by the Task Force.

12 suicides in 2 years

Twelve suicides were reported over a period of two years, and there were 18 cases of attempted suicide in these institutions alone.

Their study showed that the students sought counselling help for academic stress, time management, alcohol abuse, drug addiction, health issues, anxiety, depression, insomnia, stress from parental expectations.

Access to effective care, physical and mental, is a crucial factor that can prevent suicide, explained Lakshmi Vijayakumar, the psychiatrist on the Task Force.

Some institutions, including the IITs in Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Rourkee, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, had organised services aimed at handling these problems.

Others were in the process of developing such services, according to Dr. Anandakrishnan.

Enabling environment

He made the point that the need of the hour was a proactive and enabling environment for students with psychological needs and heightened awareness and sensitivity towards issues of social justice, including gender, class and caste. 

182 - Task force moots steps to check suicides in premier institutes RAMYA KANNAN

Task force moots steps to check suicides in premier institutes

RAMYA KANNAN

12 suicides have occurred over the past two years

The task force, appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to study the spate of suicides in Central government-funded technical institutions, has found that 12 such incidents have occurred over the past two years, and 18 students attempted suicide in 26 institutions.

Seven of the 12 suicides were of students who belonged to the reserved categories: the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes.

In its report submitted to the Ministry, the task force made recommendations based on the current practices for suicide prevention and mental health promotion. It suggested that the Ministry appoint an empowered committee to ensure that all recommendations were being adopted with rigour and seriousness.

The primary mandate of the task force, chaired by M. Anandakrishnan, was to study the increasing occurrences of suicides among students at Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management.

“Even if the number is low in comparison to the total number of suicides, each case becomes high profile because of media attention,” he said.

FOCUS SHIFTED

Speaking to The Hindu, task force member and psychiatrist Lakshmi Vijayakumar said that for students, the focus had shifted from making a career choice to the ordeal of “preparing for IIT.” Every student who stepped into an IIT was usually a topper. However, subsequently, the ‘averaging’ factor set in — the move from being the topper to being one among many could be disorienting. Though the majority bounced back, some could be negatively impacted.

The report says a lot of burnout also happens while students prepare for the entrance exams, further affecting the subsequent academic performance. Furthermore, homesickness, new-found independence and parental pressure to perform continuously, fuelled further by the student’s own ambition, all kick in together. Again, the majority of students manage to adjust themselves to this within six months. But a small fraction is trapped in a vicious loop that makes them unhappy. Another small percentage may have a history of illness and may take the extreme step of attempting suicide, especially when the first setbacks occur in their studies or in personal relationships.

More than half the institutions that responded to the task force did not have a fulltime counsellor. Only 10 of the 24 institutions had scope for students to self-declare mental health problems, says the report.

Consequently, Dr. Anandakrishnan said, the task force recommended that each institution have a dedicated system to cater to the mental health and counselling needs of its students. Multiple stakeholders, including parents, must be involved. It has come out with instructions on the structure of the counselling centre/service. Every institution should establish a mechanism to handle suicidal behaviour and crisis management, besides organising sensitisation and awareness programmes for the faculty and establishing a protocol for responding to media queries about suicides.

The empowered committee should establish a database of incidents of suicides in these institutions.

181 - Panel for counselling to check student suicides in tech campus

Panel for counselling to check student suicides in tech campus Press Trust of India / New Delhi November 15, 2012, 19:55 Atributing rising suicide cases in technical institutes including IITs to academics related stress and other reasons, a panel set up to address the issue has emphasised on regular counselling along with constitution of a monitoring cell in HRD Ministry. The panel has proposed a holistic model for institutes to emulate. This model is based on the some of the best counselling models followed by institutes such as IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur and Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai, said sources in the HRD Ministry. The panel headed by IIT Kanpur chairman M Anandakrishnan submitted its report to HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju today, who was positive about it, sources said. The team studied about 26 centrally funded techical institutes, observing that during the last two years there has been about 12 suicides in campuses. During the course of preparing the report, the panel also compared the suicide rates in international campus in comparision to Indian institutes. Attributing such incidence to academic related stress, personality problem, drug addiction, failed love etc, it said that the monitoring mechanism in the Ministry should also engage in doing a social analysis of the suicides and developing strategies to stop them. The institutions, it suggested, need to hold regular counselling sessions and encourage students to seek assistance from specialists. Increasing cases of suicides in IIT campuses has been a matter of concern for the IIT council which has periodically been stressing on an effective mecanism to curb it.

180 - Counsellors for IIT, IIM's suicidal students

Counsellors for IIT, IIM's suicidal students

Charu Sudan Kasturi, Hindustan Times

New Delhi, October 04, 2012

Students at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other top institutions may soon get regular stress-busting and counselling sessions alongside classes, as part of a national plan to check suicides.

The human resource development (HRD) ministry under Kapil Sibal is set to

launch India's first such initiative soon.

The new plan will cover every centrally funded technical institution including the IITs, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs).

While isolated suicides have dogged the IITs for decades, the number of suicides has increased steadily the past few years. Since 2008, at least 33 students across IITs have killed themselves.

Several of them were under treatment for psychological ailments, but hardly any received regular treatment at the IITs, HRD ministry sources said.

"The sad thing is that even our premier institutions have failed to provide the kind of counseling and psychological help and therapy that students need in high stress situations," a senior official said.

The blueprint of the new initiative finalised by a panel set up by Sibal under IIT Kanpur chairman M Anandakrishnan proposes creation of a central empowered committee to monitor the implementation of the strategy apart from dramatic institutional changes, government sources have told HT.

Each institution will have full-time counselors and psychiatrists just like top universities abroad. Institutions will need to hold regular counselling sessions and encourage students to seek assistance from their team of specialists without fearing any stigma.

To ensure that institutions implement and sustain the plan, the Anandakrishnan panel has recommended that the HRD ministry fund 80% of the additional expenses that the strategy will involve. The school concerned will have to foot the remaining 20%.

177 - IITs to get 24x7 helplines to help overcome stress

IITs to get 24x7 helplines to help overcome stress

Himanshi Dhawan, TNN Jan 9, 2013, 05.08AM IST

NEW DELHI: Concerned over the rising number of students at the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) driven to suicide or facing serious psychological problems, the IIT Council has decided to establish 24X7 counseling centres and helpline. The measures will be replicated in all centrally-funded technical institutes from the next academic session.

Academic stress coupled with emotional and sometimes financial strain has driven 30 students at premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to suicide and another 872 students to seek psychological counselling across 26 CFTIs in just the last two years. Of the 30 suicide attempts, 12 led to death. Seven of the 12 were from the reserved categories such as SC, ST and OBC.

Speaking after the IIT Council meeting HRD minister MM Pallam Raju said that there was a shared concern in the meeting over the issue and the recommendations of the taskforce set up to assess the problem had been accepted.

Speaking on the issue IIT-Kanpur board of governors' chairman M Anandkrishnan, who headed the taskforce, said, "All IITs have decided to set up a well-structured counseling centre and a helpline." This will also be replicated in IIMs, NITs and other CFTIs. Other measures that will be taken include discrete tracking of students by teachers to keep a check on any untoward behaviour. The implementation of the measures will be monitored by an empowered committee.

The minister had suggested that the counseling services be known as wellness centres to keep it away from the taboo of "psychological" help.

DMK MP and IIT council member Vasanthi Stanley said that drugs and alcohol had made their way to the campus without any check. "We are very concerned that so many young boys and girls are making such drastic emotional decisions. I feel that there should be a mentor for every new student to ensure that the child has some support," she said.