E-Paper
Students blame it on high expectations
REACTING OVER the Monday?s Ph D scholar suicide incident at IIT-K, students of the two engineering colleges in the city feel ?something? should be done to put an effective check on such incidents. The students of the HBTI and the Maharana Pratap Engineering Institute though admitted that the suicidal tendency could be termed as a ?rare phenomenon?.
REACTING OVER the Monday’s Ph D scholar suicide incident at IIT-K, students of the two engineering colleges in the city feel “something” should be done to put an effective check on such incidents.
The students of the HBTI and the Maharana Pratap Engineering Institute though admitted that the suicidal tendency could be termed as a “rare phenomenon”. Yet they believe that a constant study of the students’ psychology and their behaviour, substantial “signals” about suicidal efforts could be identified which subsequently could be checked either through teachers’ counseling or any other measures and means.
According to them, voluminous and irrelevant course, examination fear, expectation of family members, financial stress, erratic behaviour of teachers and emotional disturbances all lead to “serious depression” among them. When several students were interviewed on the sensitive issue of suicide, most of them revealed eye-opening reasons for increasing depression among them.
Over 90 per cent of students said that the engineering syllabus was voluminous and to some extent it was irrelevant also. Teachers who are well versed with the old and irrelevant courses often go into detail and leave the latest inclusions in the syllabus. Leaving no option for students but to prepare the same on their own. This has quite often led to frustration among the students and preferred to get rid of the education.
Besides, the fear of loosing good marks and grades in the examination add to tension among 80 per cent students.
Expectation of family members especially of the parents resulted in tension to more than 90 students. They said that their parents left no chance to remind them the importance of the good marks in getting better placements. Even through letters and on telephonic calls they keep them goading to work hard.
Great expectations of the parents do not allow them to relish the engineering education and the life of the Institute.
About 20 per cent student whose parents obtained loan from various agencies including banks for imparting costly engineering education to them, remain under serious stress and leave no efforts to prove their worth before their parents.
The erratic behaviour of some of the teachers becomes a source of disgust for about 70 per cent of students. According to the students there were teachers who seldom took interest in teaching but kept on threatening with spoiling their results if they did not attend their classes fixed at odd times.
Finally the emotional attachments and breaking of intimate relationship with the members of the opposite sex, is also a cause of tension. However, it is only 15 per cent. The tender aged students when fail to get timely advice or “emotional management” go for extreme steps said most of the students of the engineering Institute.
Preferring anonymity, the students said that they did not know much about how teachers handle students at the IIT-K. However, students find a congenial environment lacking at least at their institutes.
Students said that they were directed to speak to their teachers about their personal and academic problems disturbing their mind, however, in practice students were denied freedom of expression with teachers in a homely environment.
They said that though their educational environment was quite different from the IIT, but there were certain common factors, which affected their life at the institute during study period and at times forced them to think of taking extreme steps to avoid the tough situations threatening the life and their careers.
