Has Increase in Medical Colleges Improved Quality of Medical Education?

Introduction

Our governments have reasoned that they have tried the aspirations of students to become reputed doctors who mint money. With this in mind, many private medical colleges have come into being in private and public sectors. Many medical colleges in the private sector run in the self-financing mode. This means the children have to bear the cost of the medical education. Apart from this, the parents of wards seeking medical education in the private sector need to shell out extra money in the name of donation. Despite all these, has the medical education quality increased as the governments’ claims. As per the available data, the quality has not increased even a bit. Only the pocket-size of the owners of private medical colleges has increased. In this article, we would be looking at the reasons for the dismal situation of medical education in India.

Medical Education in India

In the olden days, the medical education was in the government sector. The children who slog hard and understand the concepts only used to cut the cake during the entrance examination. Hence, only the serious-minded people used to get the seats in the medical colleges. Hence, the physicians coming out of these colleges were good. Hence, they were deployable as successful doctors in different medical colleges across the country.  With the opening of the medical education, many business-minded people have started medical colleges to make quick money. These medical colleges admitted both the students with right attitude and others. As a result, the quality of young doctors who come out of these colleges has decreased steadily over time. Looking at the lucrative market, the owners of private medical colleges have slowly increased the fees over time.  As a result, the medical education has become out-of-bounds for the children who genuinely want to study medicine.

Steady Decline in Quality

When the authorities revise the medical education fee structure upwards every year, people expected the infrastructure to improve steadily. Instead of increasing, the quality has come down due to various reasons. The primary reason is that the private medical colleges seem to have no interest in providing quality education. Since the owners of such medical colleges are spendthrift, the quality of teaching has come down.  In order to keep good teachers, the managements of these medical colleges need to shell out few extra bugs. They are not ready to do that as they want all the money collected for themselves. Moreover, they ignore other requirements such as good library, lab facility, etc. in the name of austerity. Many students who get the seats in such medical colleges either don’t have interest in medicine or don’t have right aptitude. As a result, the young physicians who get trained in modern medical practices flunk in the all India Medical Eligibility Test conducted by the Medical Council of India (MCI). The students need to pass this test to get MCI registration. In India, the MCI registration is necessary to start practicing as a doctor. According to the latest data, only 12% of the total registered medical graduates pass this test every year. The MCI has even lowered the standard of questions to enable the students to pass this year. Despite this, the pass percentage in this exam has only improved marginally this year.