Coaching Institutes: All Is Not Fair In The Messaging

Colloquially called “aspirants”, these students hope to find their own place on the billboards in the days ahed. However, the reality of India’s coaching industry may not be so rosy. Most of the claims by coaching centres on these billboards are likely misleading. Numerous coaching centres often try to take credit for the success of a topper, who may never have stepped into the building where the classes are held.

Taking note of these misleading advertisements, the Central Consumer Protection Authority recently began a crackdown on such institutes. On December 13, Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey told the Lok Sabha that CCPA has issued20 notices to IAS coaching institutes for misleading ads. He added that the CCPA has imposed penalties on 8 such coaching centres.

 

“Often the UPSC toppers on the billboards are not those who had enrolled at the coaching centre for the whole course, but candidates who showed up for mock interviews only,” said Amisha, a civil services aspirant enrolled at one of these coaching institutes.

By employing deceptive advertisements and attributing a candidate’s success to their teaching methods, these coaching institutes try to take the aspirants for a ride. They seem to promise the students that they will have a similar trajectory if they enrol at their centres. However, such advertisements conceal the fact that many of the successful candidates did not sign up with them for the course.

In November, the CCPA fined Khan Study Group (KSG) Rs 5 lakh for putting up advertisements with misleading claims. According to the government watchdog, the institute had claimed that 682, including the top 5 scorers, out of the total 933 candidates selected in the UPSC Civil Services Exam 2022 were from KSG.

However, the CCPA found that the institute advertised various types of courses to boost enrollments but hid information about the courses opted by the successful candidates. In its response, KSG said out of the 682 successful candidates shown in its advertisement, 674 took the mock interview programme, which is free of cost to all aspirants. Later, it was found that only 8 successful candidates took guidance from KSG for additional courses, that too during previous years.

Amisha, who will appear for CSE next year, said aspirants usually enrol in coaching institutes right after passing out of schools. She said the success rate of an institute is of paramount interest to the parents or guardians of a candidate.

The ploy used by coaching institutes is not limited to deceive IAS aspirants only.

A former NEET aspirant said she joined a coaching institute in Rajasthan’s Kota after it claimed a significantly higher success rate than others.

“However, after speaking to my classmates, I learnt they never saw these students attend any classes. The advertisements influenced me and my friends immensely. Even my parents were influenced by the ads. The more students they saw in the list of toppers, the more confident they felt about my joining the institute,” she added.

Need For A Policy To Regulate The Coaching Industry

According to a report by the India Brand Equity Foundation, India has the largest population in the age bracket of 5-24 years (580 million). Therefore, there is a need for a safeguard for students and their parents against such unfair trade practices by coaching institutes.

“The government should crack down on coaching institutes that use false ads to lure students. No coaching institute can make a student successful unless the student has the capability to do so,” said Sulagna Mukhopadhyay, who teaches at Jadavpur University in Kolkata.

Ishan Roy Chowdhury, an advocate at the Delhi High Court, said the CCPA can impose a fine of Rs 10 lakh and imprisonment for up to two years for a false or misleading advertisement on the violating institute or endorser. “If a litigant so desires he can even take recourse to sections of fraud under the penal code against violators," Chowdhury added.

The impact of misleading advertisements by coaching institutes is more on those who come from underprivileged families. In fact, these institutes tend to focus on rural areas, where people tend to easily believe these claims. An uglier consequence of this is parents tend to pull their children out of education altogether if they see no return on their investment (bank loans).

Ridhi Bhutani, a former Teach For India fellow, explained how some students are more vulnerable to exploitation than others.

“As a former educator who has worked with students from under-resourced communities of Delhi, I can tell these competitive exams used to garner a lot of attention from my students and their parents. I've seen their eyes sparkle at the idea of clearing a competitive exam so they can wrest their families from poverty,” Bhutani said.

“The same is applicable for parents, too. The promise of something so majestic and lucrative gives them the hope that their children can do what they couldn't.”

Experts working in the field of education are now calling for a regulatory framework for coaching institutes to tackle the menace of misleading advertisements.

Rahul Sofat, a teacher at Delhi’s Air Force Golden Jubilee Institute, said, “I feel some changes in the policy or law can help, but at the same time agencies responsible to enforce the law should have more teeth.”

Sofat said the government should develop a grading or rating mechanism for these institutes on the basis of feedback from students. “Any misinformation provided by the institutes should attract punitive punishment, so that it acts as a deterrent for others,” he added.