Let us take you on a short journey. Imagine you were a UPSC aspirant in the year 2023 (there is also close to a 1% chance you are, as we have almost 13 Lakh aspirants every year).
You come across an advertisement for ‘Khan Study Group’ or KSG, a renowned coaching institute for the examination. Their promises are reeling you in, ‘682 out of 933 selected students are from KSG’. You read further, and it feels like the place your dreams are finally going to come true when you read: ‘All TOP 5 Successful Candidates of UPSC Civil Services Exam 2022 are from KSG.’
You’d likely not think over this claim a second time, of course, they cannot lie in their advertisements, right? That’s that then, a perfect match. You enrol in these classes and start taking another step in the direction of your dream career. Is this a happy ending? Maybe not.
The likelihood of this story remaining fictional began when these advertisements were put up. You might have guessed it already. None of these claims were actually ‘completely true’.
The top 5 candidates – they never actually studied at KSG, but simply took their free mock examinations to test their own preparation, which may have been done at another coaching institute or even without any such external teaching. Only 8 candidates from the claimed 682 actually took educational courses at KSG!
Despite it not being untrue that top UPSC candidates were associated with them, the ads misled you to believe it was their education that got them to the pinnacle. This, clearly, would be deceitful to lakhs of aspirants and take unethical advantage of them. These are not our words, but what the Central Consumer Protection Authority believed when they passed an order against these ads by KSG, demanding they take them down and fined them Rs. 5 Lakhs.
The problem does not end here. Everyday coaching classes pop up for every level, be it school, college or competitive exams. Almost all of us have seen their tall claims: Think ‘Guaranteed admissions’, ‘95%+ score ensured’, etc. And anyone, be it a student or aspiring professional in these careers can be gullible and fall for such false claims with no backing.
What then, should students turn to, in order to inform their decision on such classes better?
The New CCPA Draft Guidelines:
The Draft Guidelines from CCPA lay out what coaching classes can advertise moving forward. They also serve as an excellent guide for a student to look out for false ads:
No complete assurances on results, guaranteed jobs, admissions or ranks:
A coaching centre must endeavour to provide the best teachers, facilities and educational resources for their students to succeed in exams. But, at no point can this process guarantee an outcome, as various factors influence the performance of students and the outcome of exams. Be it a student’s inherent aptitude and interest or external circumstances, among many other factors. Hence, such guarantees cannot and should not be made, as the CCPA concurs. As a student, you can watch out for these.
No using students’ testimonials without their express consent
As seen in the story above, students doing well are almost always used along with their pictures, or quotes attributing their success to the coaching centre. However, often such testimonials are false and taken without the student’s consent. This makes it very unclear if the student got the claimed benefits from the classes, whether theri success can be attributed to other things, or maybe they did not even attend the courses of the coaching centre like the above story!
So, it is very important to see if the classes are actively and expressly seeking student consent for such testimonials before believing them to be true.
The CCPA also has this mandate, while asking for specific, and not vague information about successful candidates to be published
Other elements to watch out for include:
- Are they creating a false sense of urgency? (Eg: ‘enroll today, or miss out on your JEE dreams!’)
- Do they have prominent disclaimers to ensure well-placed trust?
Such erring coaching centres can be fined upto Rupees 50 Lakhs, and even imprisoned.
What can you do?
The CCPA’s guidelines have not been passed yet, and they want the people’s feedback on whether and how these guidelines are before passing them.
You can give your opinion on the complete guidelines by doing the following:
You can read the gist of the guidelines and respond through WhatsApp using this link, or start the conversation by typing ‘ads’ to Civis’ number +918976926914.
You can also respond on our web platform here.
To leave you with this one idea: Laws and policies cannot be well-informed when created without the perspectives of those affected by it. To ensure coaching centres can be held accountable better, respond today to help make this draft into law!
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Mallika Dandekar is a Consultatio Fellow at Civis.vote, a civic-tech non-profit platform that works to build dialogue between governments and citizens using technology to bridge the gap between the two.