At least eight FIITJEE coaching centres in various parts of the country have abruptly shut shop over the past one week, leaving several thousand students and their parents in the lurch ahead of board and entrance examinations scheduled to be held in the coming months, even as people filed police complaints alleging that the institute did not issue refunds despite cutting short classes.
A centre in Noida Sector 62was the latest to close on Wednesday. The private coaching institution also shut centres in Meerut, Ghaziabad, Lucknow and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and one centre each in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh, Patna (Bihar) and Laxmi Nagar in Delhi.
The closures came after a raft of teachers resigned from these centres over the non-payment of salaries and better offers from institutes, said management staff at the centres and former faculties.
Founded in 1992 by IIT Delhi graduate DK Goel, FIITJEE offers coaching for students in grades 6 to 12 aiming for seats at the Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology or for a raft of science olympiads.
HT visited the FIITJEE head office in Kalu Sarai, Delhi. However, security guards said the management staff has not visited the centre for five days.
{{/usCountry}}HT visited the FIITJEE head office in Kalu Sarai, Delhi. However, security guards said the management staff has not visited the centre for five days.
{{/usCountry}}Further, calls made to phone numbers on FIITJEE’s website and email sent to its official mail ID did not receive responses till the time of going to press.
Parents said they were concerned about the future of their children.
“My daughter is enrolled in the Noida centre of FIITJEE to clear the engineering entrance examination. I had submitted two years’ fees in advance, to the tune of ₹4 lakh, in July 2024. Now, they have shut the centre, affecting my daughter’s dream of becoming an engineer. The centre should either refund our money or complete the remaining course,” said a parent who asked not to be named.
A group of parents held a protest outside the FIITJEE centre in Noida and filed a complaint at the Sector 58 police station in Noida.
“The academic staff has left the FIITJEE Noida centre. We spoke to parents and assured them that either the coaching centre will refund the money or restart the classes for the students. We are seeking a response from FIITJEE officials,” said Noida deputy commissioner of police Ram Badan Singh.
Vijay Krishna Sahay, whose daughter is enrolled in a FIITJEE centre in Patna, said the centre’s abrupt closure without prior notice “completely disrupted my daughter’s studies and put her career at risk.”
Two former teachers of the Patna centre told HT that they left the coaching institute because they weren’t paid for months.
“I have been teaching there for more than four years but I left the Patna coaching centre in November last year because I had not been paid since July 2024,” said one of the teachers.
Another teacher concurred.
A staff from the management team of Meerut centre of FIITJEE said the centre does not have any faculty to teach students. “It has been a week since our faculty left the centre as they were getting better offer from other coaching centres. We have informed the situation to the FIITJEE Delhi head office and we will restart the classes if they provide us sufficient faculty to teach around 500 students,” he said.