‘Peer pressure driving students to suicide’

‘Peer pressure driving students to suicide’ Nikhila Henry TNN  Hyderabad: At least 17 students have committed suicide in corporate junior colleges in the last two years and more than a dozen students run away from their hostels every year, police records reveal. Peer pressure to excel in private residential colleges is said to be the main reason behind this.     The suicide of a 16-year-old Intermediatefirst-year studentof Narayana Residential Junior College in Madhapur on Wednesday underscored how academic pressure to study for 18 hours a day was forcing studentstotaketheextremestep.     “Suicides among students in Intermediate colleges could be due to a gamut of reasons starting with academic pressure. There are several cases of suicides caused due to failure in examinations,” Anurag Sharma, commissioner of police, told TOI.     Police had also lodged three attempts to suicide cases against students from three private colleges in the city in 2013, where scores of students have been trying to flee from residential facilities, where they are also forced to study for long hours, said the city’s top educationists and cops.     Alarmingly, it is not just Hyderabad which is getting rocked with these cases of suicides. According to police records collected from various districts in AP, where main branches of many private junior colleges are located, about 12 to 15 students go missing every year only to be sent back to the same college by their parents, who want them to prepare for competitive examinations.     For instance, Edupugallu, located between Vijayawada andGuntur,known as the coaching capital of Andhra region, had registered19 missing casesof junior college students, who had run away fearing examinations in 2010.     In another case, Vizianagaram, which hosts over 50 junior college coaching centres, has recorded about eight police cases filed by parents of missing children. Even in Hyderabad, the number of missing complaints filed by parents went up to six in the past two years.     The trend has been catching up for the past five years with the competition for admissions in IITs, IIITs and medical colleges becoming tougher year by year. The students usually go missing for just two to three days, however, indicating higher pressure on them.     The reason for this seemingly dangerous trend could be the pattern of studies in these colleges experts said.     “Students are admitted in bulk to these colleges but only those who fare well in the term examinations are given attention. The crème de la crème of students who join these colleges are given the assistance of best teachers to turn them into rank holders. The college management does not pay any attention to average or below average students,” said P Madhusudan Reddy, a city educationist.     In whatseemstobe a formof academic apartheid, students who join corporate colleges are screened during internal examinations and later on separated into groups.     “The best performers reach the central office campus of the private college where teachers give them much attention. Those who do not make it to this top list are left with substandard teachers,” said Achyuta Rao, a child rights activist.     Cause of suicides and the man missing cases could also be the rigorous schedule the students go through on a day to day basis, observers said. In residential facilities in colleges, students are made to study for about 18 hours including the classroom teaching sessions.     “Not all students can cope with this schedule,” a teacher from a private college in the city admitted. Junior college officials,however,saidthatin mostcases students who do not like the subject from the very beginning quit the course.  Times View Suicides by several young lives due to academic pressure to excel is a cause for serious concern. The government should immediately order an inquiry to find out the kind of pressure students are subjected to inside the residential colleges spread across Andhra Pradesh. Students who run away from campus must also be questioned to find out more about the grueling schedule.