Private coaching centres have mushroomed in the city over the last few years. It all started in the early 2000s and by 2019, they have formed a strong web in each and every corner of the Orange City. They are spreading their reach in the rural areas and outskirts of the city as well. As the competition for securing a place in the top notch engineering or medical college is intensifying, the network of these coaching centres is also expanding far and wide. This has resulted in warfare of sorts amongst the coaching centres too.
In order to woo the students and their parents, and to race ahead of their counterparts in the city, coaching centres resorting to gimmicks like, putting up banners, hoardings and using all the media platforms for publicity. Not the ones to hesitate when it comes to making tall claims, they are going all out to attract as many potential candidates they can.These hoardings and banners serve like their own published report-card which lauds the achievements of their coaching institute. Every effort is being made to prove that they are the best in business.
Claims of their success rate in competitive examinations like JEE, NEET, etc. is often used as a publicity technique. Attractive figures, huge cut-outs and photographs of successful candidates are used on these hoardings to establish their claim on the candidate’s academic success. However, the mention if the student in the picture hails from the city of Nagpur or any other centre of multi-state coaching centre is rarely mentioned.
Detailed figures listing down the number of students who were prepared by the institute and how many of them have qualified for admissions to medical or engineering college are seldom mentioned. No detail is provided about the student whose photos were published on the banners, pamphlets, hoardings and other advertisements.
Previous year’s batch strength, total number of successful students, previous track records has found no mention at all. Even parents have failed to ask these questions to the people who run these centres and they’ve capitalized on this opportunity.
The coaching centres hire English speaking counselors (mostly professionals hired for this purpose) and parents often get so influenced by the flair of their language that they give relevant questions and concern a miss. This has only added to the woes.
In most cases, parents fall prey to the misleading publicity of the coaching centres and end up paying a huge amount as admission and tuition fees. Nowadays, a new trend of hiring agents (very much like marketing executive of some FMCG product) has evolved in the city.Leading coaching centres have a specialised team of agents, who contact students in rural areas and lure them to take admission in their coaching institutes.
Over the last few years, several student shailing from nearby districts, towns and villages have come to Nagpur to prepare for competitive examination. They skip school, live in rented flats or as paying guest and study at coaching centres.
However, despite all these hardships there is no guarantee that they would get through the competitive exams, as promised by the coaching centres at the time of admission. What a sad state of affairs!
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