Abstract
BACKGROUND: In the last two years, due to the impact of COVID-19, students were forced to continue their education online because the government imposed restrictions to limit the spread of the virus. However, with the resumption of offline classes, the students seem to be suffering more from stress and isolation as they must face the challenges of the real world, which are quite different from the virtual one to which they have become accustomed. In this study, the effect of stress on students leading to their academic burnout and the influence of burnout on their learning satisfaction was studied. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The data were collected from 343 students of final year postgraduation courses in business management studies in India. The collected data were subject to analysis using PLS-SEM through SmartPLS 4.0 software. RESULT: The results of the study state that the perceived stress significantly increases cynicism, and exhaustion with a coefficient value of 0.481 each and decreases self-efficacy with - 0.03. Additionally, exhaustion acts as a mediator that decreases the effect of perceived stress over learning satisfaction with a positive indirect effect of 0.176. CONCLUSION: The study concludes that not all types of stress are bad for students; hence, increasing perceived stress leads to increased learning satisfaction. Whereas, in the presence of burnout factors, such as exhaustion and cynicism, learning satisfaction decrease. However, self-inefficacy, one of the factors under burnout, doesn't show any effect on learning satisfaction. The present study is widely applicable to industry and academia to deal with burnout to improve students learning satisfaction.