India’s entrance exam regime has grown into a parallel economy, draining families and destroying young lives. Coaching centres charge lakhs of rupees, promising success in NEET or JEE, but often delivering only stress and despair. Students are subjected to relentless schedules, mental agony, and physical exhaustion. The tragic rise in suicides among aspirants is the most painful indictment of a system that equates failure in one exam with failure in life.
The recent NEET leak only exposed what was already broken: centralised, high-stakes testing is fragile, unjust, and unsustainable. This obsession with entrance tests has hollowed out school education. Board exams are treated casually, while coaching dominates. The result is a distorted pedagogy where knowledge is secondary to rote drills. Worse, the infrastructure required to conduct exams for 20-30 lakh students are massive, costly, and nearly impossible to secure against leaks. The NEET fiasco proves that mass-scale testing is both vulnerable and corrosive to trust.
A return to marks-based admissions offers a humane alternative. SSC, Class XI, or Class XII results – moderated and standardised across boards – can serve as the basis for entry into engineering, medicine, and other courses. Decentralised admissions, managed state-wise, would reduce pressure while still allowing pan-India opportunities. Expand IITs, AIIMS etc. all over the country and admit students from across India based on marks obtained in the above said exams; and to achieve this, standardise board results for equal opportunity to every Indian. Crucially, school exams must be upgraded to test analytical skills, making them equivalent in rigour to entrance tests.
This would restore dignity to school education and reduce dependence on costly coaching centres. Equally important is a shift in mindset. Education must be delinked from job guarantees and aligned with industry needs. Today’s generation often aspires to abandon family professions- even after studying abroad-in pursuit of white-collar jobs. This trend has contributed to rising unemployment, while valuable family trades and businesses are left to decline. Instead of chasing elusive jobs, students should be encouraged to modernise their family professions with contemporary knowledge and technology. Agriculture, crafts, and small industries can be transformed into sustainable ventures with the help of knowledge and abilities acquired from education.
Curricula must be reoriented toward skill development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Degrees alone no longer guarante e employment; practical training and adaptability are the real currency of opportunity. By aligning education with industr y and b usiness requirements, India can produce graduates who are employable, creative, and capable of strengthening local economies. Vocational pathways, apprenticeships, and industry-linked curricula should be prioritised alongside traditional academics. Self-employment potential can be enhanced by integrating vocational training, entrepreneurship modules, and industry partnerships into education.
Students should be taught financial literacy, digital skills, and practical know-how to modernize family professions or start small ventures. Challenges include social stigma around non-white-collar work, lack of access to credit, and uneven training quality. The benefits are significant: reduced unemployment, stronger local economies, and empowered youth who create jobs rather than chase them. Government must provide skill hubs, low-interest loans, mentorship networks, and incentives for innovation, ensuring self-employment becomes a respected and viable career path. This can reduce demand for engineering and medicine, and as a result for entrance examinations too. The socio-economic benefits of such reform are immense.
Families would be spared the financial ruin of coaching fees. Students would be protected from despair and suicides caused by examination pressure. Local businesses and professions would be revitalised by educated youth bringing modern skills to traditional livelihoods. And the nation would gain a workforce that is both rooted in community and responsive to global industry demands. Reform must dismantle the coaching trap, restore trust in schools, and reorient education toward skills, dignity, and sustainable professions. India’s future lies not in mass exams and rote learning, but in empowering students to build livelihoods, modernise family professions, and contribute meaningfully to society.
Education must evolve from being a ticket to employment into a foundation for civic growth, innovation, and generational progress. Lakhs of coaching centres across India cannot be dismantled overnight, but their role must be redefined. The government should gradually integrate them into formal education by accrediting centres that provide genuine skill training , while discouraging rote-based exam coaching. Incentives can be offered for centres that shift toward vocational courses, digital literacy, and entrepreneurship programs. At the same time, strict regulation is needed to curb exploitative fees and false promises. To tackle their lobby, transparent reforms, public awareness campaigns, and strong political will are essential, ensuring that education policy prioritises students’ welfare over commercial interests.
(The writer is a retired Scientist, CSIR)