India’s booming coaching industry faces scrutiny as exam leaks fuel student anger

India’s booming coaching industry faces scrutiny as exam leaks fuel student anger In the final instalment of a three-part series, CNA looks at India’s booming private tuition scene, where fierce competition for coveted university places is fuelling a high-pressure coaching culture. BENGALURU/SINGAPORE: For millions of families in India, becoming a doctor, lawyer or engineer remains a coveted career path - fuelling a booming tuition industry that caters to students competing for highly sought-after college places. The country has a massive network of private institutes and centres preparing candidates for national medical and engineering university entrance exams - as well as civil service recruitment. But the market has come under intense scrutiny following a series of exam paper leaks - including one earlier this year that forced more than two million students to resit the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to top medical colleges. The scandal then became a rallying point for a Gen Z-led protest movement that ultimately forced the education minister to quit. While much of the public anger has focused on failures by education authorities, experts and observers say the role of the private tuition and coaching industry has faced far less scrutiny. Speaking to CNA, Indian education activist Pradeep Poonia pointed to cases where industry players had been linked to exam paper leaks, which included this year’s NEET exam. In May, India’s top investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested the owner of a private coaching institute in Latur city after investigators recovered questions matching those in actual examinations. Other cases included a faculty member of a private education centre in the city of Pune being arrested in late May for allegedly receiving leaked questions for a physics paper part of the NEET exam. In July, Rajasthan police also arrested a coaching centre operator over leaking a 2022 lecturer recruitment exam. The intense competition around NEET creates a ready market for leaked material, Poonia said, adding that many people are “ready to pay” for leaked exam papers and material. “It’s all about the money,” he said. According to CBI investigations into the 2026 NEET leak, exam papers were sold at 1 million to 1.2 million rupees (US$10,500 to US$12,500). “That’s why it happens.” For 17-year-old Shaikh Sidra Mudassar, who is preparing for this year’s Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to engineering colleges, the recent situation has only deepened her frustration with an “unfair and exhausting” system. “Even after preparing for so long, (it feels like) you are being cheated,” she told CNA. “Not because you’re scoring low or not working hard enough - but because someone else’s parents can afford to buy that score for their child.” She knows first-hand just how much hopeful students invest in preparing for these exams. To ace the JEE, “we are expected to study for more than 10 hours every day to get a good score”, Mudassar said, adding that some students could cram for up to 16 hours a day. “It’s quite hectic,” she said. She enrolled in a test-prep centre in Grade 11, at the age of 16. Most of her other school mates had enrolled due to parental pressure but Mudassar said she took up private classes because she thought it would help her “crack the JEE” - and allow her to secure “a bright future”. Children now enroll as early as age 11, she added. She has also seen how a female cousin had spent three years preparing for the NEET medical school entrance exam, only to have her efforts derailed by exam paper leaks twice - in 2024 and again this year. “Her parents are doctors, her elder brother is a doctor,” Mudassar said, adding that there had been a lot of pressure on her cousin's part to succeed and follow in their paths. BOOMING MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY Twenty years ago, it “wouldn’t have been necessary” for students to attend additional coaching classes just to prepare for a high-stakes college entrance exam, said Neha Singh, co-founder of data insights firm Tracxn. But today, enrolling in private centres and institutes has become a basic requirement for anyone preparing for competitive university entrance exams, she added. The amount of money pouring into entrance exam preparation reflects how deeply entrenched private tuition has become in India’s education system. Estimated to be worth nearly US$15 billion, the market is expected to reach at least US$23 billion by 2030, according to a report published earlier this month by market research firm RedSeer Strategy Consultants. Nearly US$4 billion in investment has also flowed into it, according to Tracxn - which includes substantial private-equity and venture-capital funding. Centres and operators have pushed back against suggestions that leaked exam papers are commonplace in the industry, arguing that such practices undermine legitimate tutors and providers. Rohit Gupta, chief experience officer at Physics Wallah, a test-prep institute headquartered in Noida with branches in other cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, told CNA that their learning material and content is “developed by faculty and academic teams who leverage publicly available curriculum and syllabus”. “The safeguard is the provenance of the material - where the questions came from, who created them and what sources were used,” Gupta said. Employees are also required to report any claims of access to leaked papers through the company’s legal and compliance channels, he added. Shivkanya Deshpande, who runs coaching classes for banking and government recruitment exams in Pune, said leaks ultimately undermine institutes whose results depend on the quality of their teaching. “For legitimate institutes, this (paper leak scandal) is a nightmare,” she said. “Our entire business model relies on a fair system where our rigorous training dictates the outcome.” Yet the sheer concentration of students in India’s major private coaching hubs in cities like Kota and Sikar, can create a ready market for leaked exam papers, experts said. “(Coaching) hubs concentrate millions of desperate students, creating a lucrative market for syndicates,” Deshpande said. But while legitimate institutes depend on teaching to produce results, rogue operators may see leaked exam questions and papers as a shortcut to securing top ranks for students, she said - which can then be used to attract more students and revenue. Others however, have cautioned against overlooking the role that legitimate centres and institutes can play in helping students navigate increasingly competitive and complex exams. Kota, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, is perhaps the country’s best-known hub - drawing hundreds of thousands of students preparing for highly competitive college entrance exams. Sikar, another city in Rajasthan, has replicated aspects of Kota’s model while offering lower property, accommodation and living costs, helping it grow rapidly, noted Poonia. Independent analyst Pranav Bhavsar said there was still “a strong case” for organised providers and centres in offering structured courses and specialised exam preparation techniques. “The standardisation is there, the curriculum is there. It’s almost like a mini college,” he said. MILLIONS COMPETING FOR LIMITED NUMBER OF PLACES At the heart of the industry’s growth is fierce competition for a limited number of university places. More than two million candidates sat for this year’s NEET exam, competing for 129,600 places across 823 medical colleges. At least 38 paper leaks involving national and state-level exams have been reported in India since 2021, according to Indian media outlets. Aspiring engineers face a similarly steep funnel. Around 1.5 million candidates sat for two rounds of JEE entrance exams in January and April earlier this year, according to NTA figures. Just over 67,000 seats were available across 138 of the most sought-after government-funded engineering institutions. For many students, the race begins even before they sit for their entrance exams - and can come at the expense of other interests. Mudassar said that while regular schooling exposes children to a range of subjects and activities, intensive entrance-exam preparation can narrow their focus to just a handful of subjects that determine their scores. “We have to focus on the things which are important - but that leads to us being very pressurised - and not being able to do the things we actually like,” she said. Adding to that pressure is the belief among many families that education - and particularly sought-after careers such as medicine and engineering - offers a path to greater economic security. “We have a lot of middle class or lower income class households, which see education as their only way for coming out of their economic status,” said Bhavsar the independent analyst. SELLING THE DREAM For students and families navigating the intense competition for university places, private coaching centres often sell more than lessons - they sell the promise of success. Mudassar the student said she has seen how some private centres and institutes market themselves to anxious students and their parents. “They sell dreams (and) convince parents that if they put their child in our institute, he will definitely get (good) results,” she said. And parents buy into these promises, she said - because institutes are able to point to high ranks and results achieved by previous batches of students. Stellar results are central to the industry’s business model, experts said. Producing exam toppers can bolster an institute’s reputation, attract the next batch of students and, ultimately, drive revenue. But the intense competition to showcase successful students has also fuelled questionable marketing practices. India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has repeatedly penalised coaching firms over misleading advertisements since 2023. By December 2025, the regulator said it had issued 57 notices to coaching institutes and imposed nearly 11 million rupees in penalties, while clamping down on misleading ads and claims. Shivkanya Deshpande described “topper poaching” as an open secret in parts of the industry. “Institutes will outright buy the success stories of top rankers, sometimes offering cash, vehicles, or refunding their entire education - just to paste their faces on a billboard, even if the student only ever took a single mock test with them,” she said. Other experts said some coaching centres also create “star batches” by identifying top-performing students early and giving them preferential resources like access to sought-after faculty and additional academic support. This can leave other students with less support, experts said, even as their fees help sustain the institutes’ operations. FUTURE OF INDIA’S COACHING CULTURE For students and their families, the sums involved can be substantial. Mudassar said tuition in smaller towns like Ahilyanagar, located in Maharashtra state, costs around 200,000 rupees a year, although discounts for top-performing students can bring the price down. In cities like Kota, some institutes charge between 500,000 and 600,000 rupees annually - a significant financial commitment for middle-class families whose annual household incomes can range from around 500,000 to 1.2 million rupees. But regulating coaching institutes is only part of the answer, experts said. The more fundamental question is whether students should need them in the first place. “The first and best thing should be that there should not be any need for coaching in India,” said Mudassar. Schools should provide students with sufficient preparation for tough entrance exams. “The kind of preparation that we want and need for exams should be provided at our schools.” That is also the direction laid out in India’s 2020 National Education Policy. The policy warned that board and entrance examinations - and the resulting “coaching culture” - were replacing valuable learning time with excessive exam preparation. It also called for entrance exams to place greater emphasis on conceptual understanding, with the aim of eliminating the need for coaching to “crack” them. Some private schools have already begun offering integrated programmes with test-prep firms, noted Tracxn co-founder Singh. This allows students to complete parts of their school curriculum and entrance-exam preparation within the same timetable. But expecting ordinary schools to take on the role of coaching centres also presents its own challenges. Deshpande said schools and colleges are designed to provide a broad education, while coaching institutes specialise in exam patterns, speed, mock tests and other tactical preparation. Poonia advocates limiting the number of times candidates can attempt high-stakes entrance examinations. Candidates for NEET must be at least 17, but the 2026 examination bulletin sets no upper age limit or cap on the number of attempts. “If there is no limit on the number of attempts, there is no exit for the student,” Poonia said. Students who have spent years preparing, and whose families have invested heavily in that preparation, can find it psychologically and financially difficult to walk away, he added. Limits on age and the number of attempts can also make it harder for parents to insist that their children try for “one more year”. Other measures, including increasing university capacity, strengthening exam security and more strictly policing misleading advertising, could ease some of the pressures, experts said. Physics Wallah’s Gupta said adding university places should reduce competition, although doing so would require qualified teachers, infrastructure and a broader academic ecosystem - changes that cannot happen overnight. Ultimately, policy reforms may only go so far if families continue to see a narrow set of educational and professional pathways as the surest route to success, said analyst Bhavsar. For Mudassar, the measure of meaningful reform is simpler: whether the next generation can prepare for the future without sacrificing so much of childhood to exam preparation. “Holistic development of a child is quite important.”