Why Are So Many IIT Madras Students Trying To Kill Themselves? - India Times

Why Are So Many IIT Madras Students Trying To Kill Themselves?

Kunal Anand

October 19, 2015

An Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) student was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room this morning. 

If this is confirmed as suicide, the pre-final-year student dual-degree Electrical Engineering will mark what has become a dangerous trend at the IIT.

It would be the second on-campus suicide by a student of the prestigious institution in the last 30 days. Just last month (22 September),  N Narendra Kumar Reddy, a 23-year-old IITian hung himself from his ceiling fan after returning from his village. The M.Tech student was being sponsored by a private construction firm.  

The pressure may have gotten to him

In 2014, IITs saw an estimated 14 student suicides, probably the highest ever across these elite colleges. In May 2015, Jitesh Sharma, a third-year student of chemical engineering at IIT Bombay, allegedly committed suicide, and his note mentioned poor performance in his exams as well as his worry about placements.  The inability to cope - often spiraling into depression - has haunted several students. "The world creates artificial expectations. There's peer pressure, family pressure, societal pressure.

"Unfortunately, for some students, their ambition is centred around pay packages. To their mind, their success will be judged only around their pay packages and placements," says Indranil Manna, director, IIT Kanpur.

Agrees Mohak Mehta, placement manager at IIT Bombay: "There are students blindly taking up computer science and engineering even if they aren't inclined towards it just because that's where the fattest pay cheques are. Parents call up the placement cell to find out the schools or branches getting the top salaries, and that's the one they pressurise their children to join."

Students slip into depression easily

At a leading IIT, a top 50 AIR holder in JEE took up computer science but could not cope with the pressure. He went into depression. "In this competitive environment, when someone starts slipping, stress just keeps building up from there," says a director at a top IIT, who does not wish to be named.

You could have been a topper all your life, but here you may be struggling to get by

"There are students coming into the system thinking that once they've made it to an IIT, things are easy from then on," says Parth Vaswani of IIT Kanpur. "They don't realise it's just the first hurdle. You could have been a topper all your life, but here you may be struggling to get by." Pressure builds up in various ways. There are students who see their batchmates bag coveted internships in the second and third years and suffer from comparison. There are those who have been faring poorly academically. Then there are students from humble backgrounds whose families have sold their land or put in all their savings for what they believe is the ticket to a better life. Some of these students don't even have the time to bond or make friends. "Stress and depression is more prevalent among people who are shy and quiet. There are counsellors on campus but they won't reach out for help," says IIT Bombay's Mohak Mehta.

IITs too have their own systems in place. There are counsellors on board, buddy systems, faculty advisors at hand to look out for students at risk. "We try to make sure there are multiple ways of reaching out to students," says Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director, IIT Madras. "It's not always foolproof but we try and ensure we do everything we can."

Yet, IIT Madras sticks out when looking at news coverage of suicide. Between 2019-2013, it saw 8 suicides

IIT-M director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said they had implemented recommendations of M Anandakrishnan Report on increasing suicides in centrally-funded institutions. "Professional counsellors are available 24 hours a day on the campus and the identity of those seeking help is protected. We also have a mentoring system run by senior students in which a volunteer helps at least seven students individually," he said. 

Many students and professors find these measures quite ineffective.

"Instead of finding the root cause and building a collective support system of students and teachers, the measures implemented here are to silence or control students. Seniors working as mentors for MITR mostly spy on students who smoke or are in relationships," said a fourth year dual degree science student.

"Sir, since I joined in 2009, every year there has been a suicide. As a student I have the right to know about IIT-M's actions to prevent such unfortunate incidents. And even after the introduction of MITR (a guidance and counselling system), the story is same,"  A student wrote in a concerned mail after institute dean (students) L S Ganesh posted a condolence message following the suicide of a first year student.

After a condolence statement, the college has not announced a formal plan to change what it might be doing wrong - and what might be killings its students.

(Inputs from TNN | Economic Times)

Concerted Efforts Must to End Student Suicides - New Indian Express

Concerted Efforts Must to End Student Suicides

By The New Indian Express

Published: 25th September 2015 06:00 AM

The suicide of a postgraduate engineering student at his hostel room inside the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) earlier this week is a grim reminder of the absence of suicide prevention mechanisms on campuses. Three years ago a Human Resources Development Ministry Task Force, headed by eminent academician M Anandakrishnan, had painstakingly drafted recommendations to prevent suicides in the IITs. It recommended in-house counselling to identify students with withdrawal symptoms and help them overcome thoughts of quitting in life. Many IITs are yet to act on this.

The number of students, who end their lives is disturbing. The National Crime Records Bureau’s Accidents and Suicides in India report shows that 1,31,666 students had committed suicide last year. This constituted 6.1% of the total suicides. Of this, 2,403 deaths were due to failure in examinations. Between 1981 and 2014 an estimated 81 IITians have ended their lives. 

Even coaching factories for cracking the JEE are turning into suicide hubs. Last June, five students of coaching centres committed suicide in Kota. While peer pressure is attributed as a trigger for students of elite institutions to end lives, there has hardly been any substantive research to ascertain why students who crack tough competitive examinations fail to conquer academic hurdles.

Another factor that significantly contributes to suicides is that in India career choices are thrust on students by parents. School Education Departments could play an active role by roping in psychiatrists and academics to determine a child’s aptitude in classes X and XII and help them choose the right academic course so that they are not under pressure in higher secondary classes or colleges. Parents too must be involved in these counselling sessions.

A 2012 study entitled ‘Suicide Mortality’ in India published in the renowned British medical journal Lancet pointed out that most Indians do not have access to community or support services for the prevention of suicide and have restricted access to care for mental illnesses associated with suicide. Treatment for depression is also not widely available. Therefore, combined and concerted efforts by the Education and Health Departments on this front would certainly help to curb student suicides.

Panel suggestions Still in Cold storage - The Indian Express

Panel suggestions Still in Cold storage

By Ram M Sundaram

Published: 23rd September 2015 03:45 AM

CHENNAI: Pro-active suggestions of a special task force appointed by the Human Resource Development (MHRD) ministry to study the increasing incidence of suicides in IITs, NITs and IIMs have still not been implemented even as more and more cases continue to be registered, according to members of the panel.

“We had recommended a counselling system which not only advises students, but also identifies advance indications of people under stress, who are likely to commit suicide. Four years have gone, it has not been implemented,” said chairperson of the task-force professor M Anandakrishnan. This is common among post-graduate students entering IITs and NITs after graduating from ‘lesser’ universities, he said.

The other important recommendation ignored by the institutes was establishing a database of incidents of suicides, Anandakrishnan said. 

A research student in IIT-Madras also pointed out how the institutes want to brush these issues under the carpet, instead of speaking about it in the open. “Fellow students come to know many days later about the death of students. This is the state of affairs,” the student said. The database should not only have numbers, but a comprehensive one providing details of why a student committed suicide in addition to the social, economic and educational background of the victim, Anandakrishnan told Express.

Task force member and psychiatrist Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar said the reason that most PG students commit suicide was either thesis related issues or some problems with their guides or supervisors. “Other reasons include language proficiency and interpersonal problems with their parents who might have wanted them to go for work but they preferred studying further,” said Dr Lakshmi, who also heads the suicide prevention NGO Sneha.

The report also pointed out that these students who might have been toppers in their village or college suddenly feel equal or less in an IIT and end up getting stressed because of this.

“In North India, students are cut off from reality for a year or two at coaching classes and here they are unable to cope with the infinite freedom in the institutes,” Lakshmi reasoned.

Sought After,but Given up Easy - Indian Express

Sought After,but Given up Easy

By Diana Sahu

Published: 31st August 2015 06:00 AM

Started with an aim of fostering excellence in technical education, grand brand IIT is gradually losing its sheen. While faculty crisis and decline in the quality of courses have always remained a matter of concern for the country’s finest technical education chain, the new problem that is making the IITs’ bag of woes heavier is the student dropout rate.

Union Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani informed the Lok Sabha recently that in the past three academic sessions, 2,060 students dropped out of various IITs. While 757 students dropped out in 2014-15 in the middle of their course, the number was 697 in 2013-14 and 606 in 2012-13.

The reasons, as the HRD Minister put it, are many: from shifting to other institutions to studying abroad or getting jobs during MTech and extreme academic stress.

While academicians agree with Irani, they add that the dropout number is low as far as undergraduate courses are concerned. 

Director of IIT-Roorkee Prof Pradipta Banerji says of the 575 students who opted out of the institution in the last three academic sessions, undergrads were a miniscule percentage. “A majority of this number are actually students who had enrolled for MTech or PG programmes in IIT-Roorkee, who got jobs or cleared the Indian Engineering Services. Many MTech students consider the IIT platform as a stopgap arrangement till they get their desired job,” he said. The institute, which was the seventh IIT to come up in the country, had recently expelled 73 BTech students for scoring a CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average) that was less than five, in their first year.

Students quitting mid-course has become a veritable trend, according to Director-in-charge IIT-Delhi, Prof Kshitij Gupta. The man at the helm of the institute that had 448 dropouts in the past three years, said, “In the undergraduate level, every student who joins an IIT is usually a topper. However, when he/she steps into the institution, they face a feeling of being one among many and that is coupled with the pressure to perform.”

Down South and in the East, there were only eight dropouts from IIT-Madras in 2013-14 and as far as IIT-Bhubaneswar is concerned, 16,15 and four students dropped out of the institution in 2014-15, 2013-14 and 2012-13 academic years respectively.

Prof Ratnam V Raja Kumar, Director of IIT-Bhubaneswar, said that there are instances where even after qualifying for the IIT, students sometime take the JEE again for a better rank or a preferred branch. “We have also come across some students who after admission mention that they cannot financially afford education at an IIT. In my opinion, this is affordable and there are avenues like bank loans and merit-based scholarships available for a significant percentage of them; financial weakness need not be a reason,” he stated, adding that lack of communication skills and inability to cope with the academic rigour leads only to a small percentage of the dropouts.

Communication Chasm

Language is a barrier for students from SC, ST and OBC categories, as they usually come from a Hindi medium background. Although they score well in the IIT-JEE qualifying examination, they do not perform well in the classroom because of language issues. “Such students find it tough in following the lectures, as the medium of instruction in IITs is English and the books are mostly by American authors. But if counselled properly in the first year, they are able to overcome this,” explained Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT-Madras. He suggested that hand-holding exercises like organising language proficiency classes for such students is the need of the hour — as this can cut academic stress massively. Ramamurthi added that while the average graduation grade in the four-year BTech degree is around 7, students from reserved categories score around 6.5.

pressure points

Following a spate of suicides in the IITs, the HRD Ministry constituted a task force, chaired by veteran educationist, M Ananda Krishnan. The Ananda Krishnan Committee had in its report in 2012 pointed out that stress due to personal problems, family issues, poor results and inability to cope up with the IIT education system were major reasons behind the suicides. Apparently, the Union HRD Minister also pointed out that academic stress continues to be a reason behind the dropout rate. Often, students even opt out to join lower tier institutions.

IIT-Bhubaneswar’s Director feels that a small percentage of them who are weak in conceptual understanding in Plus Two education do find academics stressful. “Such students would discontinue studies after a few months or after the first semester or the first year of education at an IIT but certainly not before registering for other courses,” says Prof Kumar. He, however, adds that such cases are rare as IIT regulations provide a good scope for weak students to tackle things at a slow pace. “Such students can take a few years more than the stipulated four years for BTech degree and do it at their own pace, subject to a maximum permissible period,” he explained.

While the committee had called for the appointment of counsellors in all the IITs, the directors said measures to meet the counselling needs of students are already in place in their institutions. “At IIT-Bhubaneswar, we are going to arrange prior counselling by senior students and faculty members for those who get selected. After their joining, we will identify those who are academically weak, keep track of them and provide remedial education to see that they do not go off track or lag behind,” says Prof Kumar, adding that it is desirable that students give importance to their own choice of subjects while picking a branch of study rather than going by what peers or seniors say.

To ensure that no one loses out due to students quitting, the IITs have had an ‘exit policy’ in place since 2012. Under this, if a student surrenders his seat, his registration fee will be refunded. The seat can then be allotted to another student in the waiting list. However, as catching up with the course is difficult, not many candidates in the waiting list join the elite institutions.

spreading worry

It isn’t just the IITs that have trouble. A whopping 2,352 students dropped out of the 30 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) during the three-year period. However, the dropout figure came down to 717 in 2014-15 as compared to 785 in 2013-14 and 850 in 2012-13. Will the tide be turned against this outflow soon?

— diana@newindianexpress.com

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.