To get into IIT, India's children ditch school for private coaching

India desperately needs to invest in and expand access to quality tertiary education.

- Debarshi Dasgupta

Being a parent to a teenager is an experience filled with unease.

It is harder still in India, where highly competitive college entrance exams start looming as soon as a child hits his or her early teens.

As a father to a 13-year-old boy, I am no exception. My son must soon decide whether he will sit the exams to enter one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) after he finishes school in four years.

He must start preparing early to have a decent shot at entering one of these institutions that have produced leaders at top firms including Google, X, FedEx and IBM.

This entails enrolling in after-school coaching programmes, leaving little time to pursue other interests that may open up new possibilities and even lead to a potentially more rewarding career – playing music, perhaps, or a sport.

A COMPETITIVE CULTURE

Each year, millions of young Indians sit exams to enter institutes of higher education, especially in engineering and medicine, drawn by the lure of high-paying jobs.

In 2024, more than 1.4 million students took the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) that determines admission to various engineering colleges, including for the 17,760 seats across 23 IITs in the country.

Another 2.4 million students took the medical college entrance exam for around 108,000 available spots.

In a country where many want their children to become doctors and engineers, these limited seats have engendered a culture of cut-throat competition and created a booming coaching industry.

Valued around 580 billion rupees (S$9 billion) in 2021, India's coaching industry might more than double to 1.33 trillion rupees by 2028, according to a 2023 report by Infinium Global Research, a Pune-based consultancy firm.