It is a multi-crore industry, which is proof enough that there are active participants on both sides that help run it. Yet, it is one that is always stuck in ambiguity when the time to comment arises. The coaching classes industry has been given the step-brotherly treatment for years on an end, and the situation doesn’t seem to change.
Many people across sections agree that coaching classes are required for all entrance exams, such as the IIT JEE or the MBA CET, where there is no college education to rely on. However, the same people are not agreeable to the idea that even students of degree college or professional courses need to opt for outside coaching.
“It is only the professors of the colleges who feel that students should not go for outside coaching,” says commerce student Sabah Syed. “I wouldn’t have survived a year of college, at least for accounts, my main subject, had it not been for classes,” she adds. Whichever be the college, if students want to score well at the board or university exams, the unanimous opinion is that they need to rely on classes. “At these classes, they are very focused on exam-oriented teaching, so it helps the students get more marks,” says student Gaurav Parikh.
It is true since the Mumbai University rules insist that only practising chartered accountants are hired to teach TYBCom students, and there aren’t many who want to volunteer. Students suffer since the professor is not able to devote as much time to teaching accounts as teachers at coaching classes. Parikh adds that the study material is quite pointed and learning is also based on what the exam requires. “Call it superficial, but at least it fulfils the need of the day – that is scoring well to get ahead. The college lectures are not even able to take care of that,” he adds. We can get into a parallel debate about knowledge vs learning for exams, but the respondents to my questions want to save that for a later day.
“That is a very policy-based discussion and has been chewed up a lot. We can do nothing about it until the system is changed. Until then, we need to rely on exam-oriented teaching,” says a professor from Siddharth College. The professor is of the opinion that university rules have prescribed a certain fixed number of hours for the teaching of every subject, and teachers cannot teach the subject in detail in the fixed hours. Again, either teacher doesn’t want to volunteer additional hours, and even if they do, students are simply not interested. “They don’t even attend regular lectures. You think they are going to show up for extra hours?”
The student community is clear – college is for fun and classes are for paying attention. “My parents will force me to take classes anyways, and I have to pay attention then. Why should I attend lectures in college also? When will I have time for myself then? Once I graduate, I will anyways be working all the time!” says Nishita Shah, a student from SIES College. It is not the forte of the degree colleges alone. With the competition redefining Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory to ‘survival of those who score the best’, it is little wonder that additional coaching is limited only to degree college students. In fact, engineering ‘tuitions’ have become common, and so has out-of-the-class coaching for medical studies. In fact, IIT directors have been quoted saying that coaching institutes are training students for the exams whereas the institutes need students with natural intelligence and not the trained one.
Students tend to disagree. “I don’t think coaching institutes are spoiling the intelligence of students, but they are helping them to reach their future goal. In fact, students get much sharper with these classes,” says IT engineering student Nirav Shah, who opted to take mathematics coaching during his course. There are hundreds like Shah, whose parents do not mind spending the extra thousands for coaching classes if it ensures scoring better. Will there ever be a situation when the students will be eased of such tensions? Only time will tell.
Top Reasons for Joining A Coaching Class
Fear – Plain and simple. Students fear they may not be able to tackle the exams without additional help. This fear stems from many factors, from parents to the lax attitude of many degree college instructors across colleges.
Peer Pressure – “Hey! My friends go and so I have to go. I don’t want to stay alone and read, whereas my friends run ahead of me in understanding concepts with the help of some teacher in a coaching class.” Also, many students have a competitive edge and want to score better than their friends. This is a major prompting factor.
To Feel Confident – Coaching enables the student to gain confidence to tackle every kind of question since he has been introduced to all the various kinds of questions that can be asked.
To Reduce Effort Needed – More often than not, coaching classes simplify everything to the last tee, including concepts and problems. It becomes far less overwhelming than textbooks, which have a lot of redundant information.
Besides, if the coaching classes are making students’ lives simpler, then there remains no reason to frown upon them.
