Recent deaths of students at IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay have reopened the discussion on well-being and what we owe to students beyond teaching and evaluation, a question that educational institutions have been reluctant to address. I believe we owe students an educational experience built on freedom, equity, trust, and empathy. While such experiences are fundamental, they remain “aspirational” on our campuses. Educational experience is still shaped by the idea of discipline and dizzying hierarchies. If anyone dares to dissent, it is likely to be labelled as indiscipline, political activism, or disrespect.The demand for change in institutional practices and for student wellbeing initiatives on campus is now gaining traction. While ensuring student wellbeing is a shared responsibility of faculty and administrators, it is often overlooked in practice. Instead, it has been outsourced to counsellors and therapists, because psychological challenges are considered as some sort of “infection” that requires expert treatment — if done appropriately and if the protocols are followed, it can be effectively managed.AdvertisementAt IIT Delhi, an external inquiry committee was formed, and at IIT Bombay, the director said a committee would examine the death and students’ concerns about representation and support services. The question is what such support should mean. In a crisis, professional care may save a life. However, the problem begins when these services become the institution’s primary measure of wellbeing. Distress is then located inside the student, while the university itself appears as a neutral background, but is not. Rules, hierarchies, classrooms, hostels, evaluation systems, grievance procedures, and the everyday exercise of authority shape how people live on campus. So, the question is not only how to treat a distressed person, but also whether we are willing to challenge and change the institutional framework that repeatedly creates fear, humiliation, uncertainty, or loss of agency. This question does not compete with clinical care; it asks what preventive and proactive measures are required to make educational institutions safe spaces for students.Mental health care requires trained professionals and, where appropriate, medication. But the medical analogy has limits when taken as a complete theory of wellbeing. A medicine can act on a biological process while the surrounding social situations remain unchanged. University life is organised very differently, with students constantly negotiating academic overload, discrimination, poor hostel infrastructure, career anxiety, and unresponsive administration. Counselling may help a student respond to these pressures, but it cannot remove them.The WHO places mental health within social, economic, and physical environments and argues that prevention must address individual, social, and structural determinants. India’s National Task Force on Student Mental Health and Suicide Prevention makes a similar point in its 2026 interim report, which connects student wellbeing with academic pressure, discrimination, financial hardship, institutional culture, distrust, and faculty preparedness. However, wellbeing is often presented as a personal skill that students are expected to acquire through time management, emotion regulation, getting enough sleep, exercising, and building resilience. These capacities have value but have their limits. Time management cannot solve an impossible workload; mindfulness cannot make an opaque grading system transparent; positive thinking cannot make a compromised grievance process trustworthy. On campus, such conditions are shaped by ordinary institutional decisions. Can students question a grade? Disagree with a supervisor? Express dissent? Can they protest? Are they allowed to participate in the decision-making? An affirmative answer to these questions can be a great starting point for the wellbeing initiative.AdvertisementAlso Read | Student suicides: IITs need an early-warning systemA deeper problem appears when universities speak the language of care while retaining a paternal model of authority. Students are treated as adults when fees, performance, and responsibility are demanded from them, but as children when autonomy, voice, or due process become inconvenient. Harshness is then defended as character-building, and obedience is conflated with “respect”. The vocabulary of the guru-shishya relationship can also be misused when reciprocity disappears from it. Respect moves upward while correction and anger move downward. Public shaming, arbitrary penalties, exclusion from opportunities, hostile communication, or the use of evaluation to settle interpersonal conflict can make educational experience distressing.There is an implicit understanding among university administrators and faculty that wellbeing policy often begins outside the classroom, as if teaching and evaluation do not impact the wellbeing of students. The university and a classroom will pass the wellbeing test if students are empowered to ask for reasons, admit uncertainty, make a mistake, disagree with a teacher, express dissent/ criticise/ protest the administration, or report unfair treatment without expecting retaliation.If wellbeing is largely a byproduct of institutional conditions, then universities must change how they govern, teach, and design campus life. This need not become another large policy package. A few principles are more important than a long list of initiatives. Students should be treated as rights-bearing adults and should be made active participants in institutional governance, rather than being limited to sentimental/ornamental purposes. Alumni and students should necessarily be part of the governance framework with board membership.you may likeFaculty and student affairs teams need role-specific training, and they must understand that differences of opinion are fundamental rights of students. They should also be trained to recognise distress, protect confidentiality, respond without humiliating, understand bias, and follow crisis protocols. A high-stress disciplinary encounter should start with a humane conversation and a proactive response outlining the available institutional support system for coping with such a turn of events, followed by follow-up conversations. This cannot just be a routine, performative process. Universities must be willing to undergo an annual student well-being audit.Universities cannot eliminate every source of suffering. Students are not always right, faculty are not always wrong, and academic standards cannot be abandoned whenever conflict appears. Indian higher education already has enough guidelines to know that student well-being and mental health cannot be separated from academic pressure and institutional culture. The harder question is whether universities are willing to examine the conditions they create.The writer is a professor and former dean of student affairs, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar