It’s
pure economics! and little bit ignorance!
93% Indian students aware of just seven career
options: What are parents doing wrong?
A recent survey on
career option awareness among Indian students has revealed that a staggering
93% of the students aged 14 to 21 were aware of just seven career options
though there are more than 250 different types of job options available in
India. Are parents doing something wrong?
just seven career options -- law, engineering, medicine, accounts
and finance, design, computer applications and IT, and management.
According to
researchers, India has a variety of 250 career options available across
40 domains covering 5,000 job types.
According to data, around 25,000 students go
abroad every year to study medicine. A look at the data provided by the
NMC and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reveals where the
problem lies. As many as 16.1 lakh candidates sat for the MBBS entrance exams
in 2021. This is against roughly 90,000 seats across the country recognised by
the National Medical Commission. The skewed ratio is the root of the issue.
There are 562 medical colleges offering MBBS in the country, of which 286 are
government institutes and 276 are private.
USUALLY MIDDLE CLASS (OC category) FAMILIES SEND THEIR CHILDREN who couldn't
compete with the reservation system in govt med colleges and couldn't pay
the astronomical donations in private med colleges, TO FOREIGN COLLEGES.
Left with no option, these aspirants often aim to
study medicine in countries such as Ukraine, China and Russia where the cost of
the entire course is between Rs 20-25 lakh.
All universities in Ukraine are approved by the
World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Besides, the Pakistan Medical and Dental
Council, the European Council of Medicine, and the General Medical Council of
the United Kingdom also recognise Ukrainian medical degrees.
Most of the ‘new' colleges in india are lying
defunct due to the lack of teachers and infrastructure.
While lakhs appear in NEET every year, only about
40,000 get admission to government medical colleges. In such a situation, a
large number of NEET-qualified students turn to “small foreign nations”.
As per the Economic Survey , the expenditure on
education was only 3.1 per cent of the GDP in 2021-22.
India’s best students
go to government medical colleges. And those who can’t, choose international
schools in countries like Ukraine and Russia over private medical colleges in
India.
Students returning from
countries such as Ukraine, who wish to practice medicine in India, are required
to clear the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination, which reportedly has an abysmally low
pass percentage of just 10-20 per cent. Those who have studied in the
United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are not
required to write the screening test.
At present, the number of medical colleges is hugely disproportionate across Indian states, with a large number of them concentrated in Karnataka (63 colleges with 9,795 MBBS seats according to NMC), Maharashtra (61 colleges and 9,600 MBBS seats), Tamil Nadu (69 colleges and 10625 MBBS seats), Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (34 colleges and 5,340 seats; and 31 colleges and 5,210 seats respectively), and Uttar Pradesh (67 colleges and 8,678 seats).
The average annual fees
for a medical course in government colleges is Rs 2 lakh and in private
colleges is Rs 10-15 lakh. This means, for a four and a half year course,
students need to shell out Rs 14 lakhs in government colleges and Rs 60-70
lakh in private institutes.
The importance of career counselling :
INDIA NEEDS 1 million career counselors
Children need to first become aware of the
many subjects and career options that exist and before they finalise one, they
will also need to build their profile for the chosen career. "The ideal age to start
considering career counseling is 13-14 years where they start with subject
exploration and selection and then work towards career selection.
Giving enough time to plan will even out the stress and give them time to
engage in critical thinking,
Recent Guidelines from NMC? Indian Citizens/Overseas Citizen of India intending to obtain
primary medical qualification from any medical institution outside India, on or
after May 2018, shall have to mandatorily qualify
the ‘National -Eligibility-cum- Entrance Test for Admission to MBBS course’.
The result of the ‘National- Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for Admission to
MBBS course’ shall deem to be treated as the Eligibility Certificate for such
persons, provided that such persons fulfil the Eligibility Criteria for
admission to the MBBS course prescribed in the Regulations on Graduate Medical
Education, 1997.”
Furthermore, the result of NEET-UG shall be valid for a period of
three (3) years from the date of declaration of result, entitling a candidate
to pursue MBBS or equivalent medical course including pre-medical/language
course, if any, followed by MBBS or equivalent medical course.
For further details: https://www.nmc.org.in/information-desk/for-students-to-study-in-abroad/
Recent directive from NMC: Now the upper age limitation to sit for NEET-UG exam is lifted. At present, 16
lakh aspirants are COMPETING for 95000 MBBS SEATS. With this GO,
more number of aspirants and more chances!
What is FMGE? How the FMGs faring in this exam??
The FMGE is conducted twice a year in June & December and a candidate has to score a minimum of 50% marks in each of the papers to be declared passed. A candidate has a maximum of 3 attempts to pass the examination.
This is a statutory requirement as per section 13(4A) of the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 amended in 2002. Those who hold an under graduate as well as post graduate medical degree from the following countries need not take the FMGE and they can directly be registered by the SMCs.
- Australia
- Canada
- New Zealand
- United Kingdom
- United States of America
As per the data available with the government, only about 16% of the candidates who appeared for the screening test between 2012-13 and 2016-17 have passed the FMGE. Close to 14000 candidates appeared for the FMGE in 2012-13. This number reduced to 6395 in 2013-14. Since 2014-15, the number of candidates appearing for the FMGE is more or less close to 12000.
Students who study
medicine in countries like Ukraine have to write FMGE - Foreign Medical
Graduate Examination to practice in India. Last year the pass percentage was
23%.If you don't pass the examination in India the degree from Ukraine is like
a waste paper.
Foreign Medical
Graduates..only after completing their Degree Graduation are eligible to sit
for Foreign Medical Graduate screening test...to apply for
Provisional/Permanent Registration at State Medical Councils.
The pass percentage of only 20% is indicative of poor standards of medical education in some of these countries. Students are often lured because of the lower fee and a guaranteed seat. Though the government has issued certain guidelines, the number of students pursuing medical education abroad hasn’t gone down.
In India, one’s caste
dictates the admission in government medical colleges and religion/riches in
private medical colleges.
Unless these
fundamental issues are dealt with head on, we will continue to see the exodus
of students abroad.
Policy makers should pay attention to the fundamental weaknesses
and problems associated with the education system in the country.
Every year, thousands of students go abroad to study. This is
not the surprising part. What’s interesting is the field of study they go out
to study - medicine - and the countries they are opting for their higher
education - China, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, even Bangladesh, etc.
There are layers within layers when it comes to classification
of medical seats in India. At the basic level, there are two main divisions -
government seats and seats in private sector. Under government, there are seats
exclusively with Central government (where Centre’s quota policy is followed
and 60 per cent seats are reserved), seats in All India Quota which is a pool
formed after states surrender 15 per cent of the seats in colleges that come
under them (here, only SC/ST quota was followed until the Modi government
introduced the OBC quota last year) and then there are 85 per cent seats with
the state governments who follow their own quota policies and give admissions
to their domiciles (with Tamil Nadu having the most reserved seats).
This means that when new colleges and new seats get added in
Tamil Nadu, there is little incremental benefit for students in unreserved
category as compared to when other states expand capacity. Moreover, Modi
government’s move to implement OBC reservation in AIQ has also lessened the
capacity that would’ve been otherwise available for unreserved category
students in light of addition of tens of thousands of seats since 2014.
Effectively, it has been a ‘two steps forward and one step backward’ approach.
Overall, it’s still progress but it would require significant expansion in seat
capacity over the next few years to compensate for the limitations of the quota
system.
That leaves the
private sector as a useful avenue which could’ve acted as a fruitful partner
for the government where the latter could focus on giving quality medical
education to economically and socially backward at affordable prices and
letting the former to cater to those who missed out on government seats. But
private sector is also hobbled by two chief problems.
First is artificial
scarcity that has been ensured for decades because it’s extremely hard for
genuine edu-preneurs to open medical colleges thanks to suffocating regulations
- one requires hundreds of crores of initial investment, annual license
approvals, requirement of setting up various teaching departments, setting up
an attached hospital with certain number of beds, more approvals to even add
seats/beds in already functioning colleges/hospitals, etc to name just a few.
When Modi government
junked the Medical Council of India and replaced it with National Medical
Commission (NMC), it had a historic opportunity to bring a transformational
change. Not only it didn’t do that, earlier this month, it issued exhaustive
guidelines for regulating fees for 50 per cent seats in private medical
colleges which will be forced to charge fees equal to what the government
colleges do. The government thinks that it is helping subsidise seats for 50
per cent students studying in private colleges but has lost sight of the fact
that colleges will be forced to increase the fees for remaining 50 per cent
seats by a huge amount and there may not be many takers for them. Even without
such cross-subsidising, students are forced to go to Ukraine, Bangladesh, China
et al because of low fees.
The second issue in
the private sector space is the dual regulatory structure that governs minority
and non-minority colleges where the former is at much bigger advantage because
the protection given under Article 30 of the constitution allows minorities to
run their colleges with great autonomy (and there is a good chance that they will
be exempted by the judiciary from NMC’s fee regulation which will further put
them at advantage). It’s not without reason that minority-run colleges rule the
roost in medical education and are almost at par in numbers with non-minority
ones. Moreover, majority of the seats in minority colleges are reserved for
people of their own religion - For ex: around 84 per cent of the seats in CMC
Vellore are reserved for Christians. PM Modi should’ve done away
with this discriminatory legal regime on the first day in office. Alas!
Yes, Essentially in India,
one’s caste dictates the admission to government medical seats and
religion/riches in private medical colleges.
It’s still not too late. Rather than exhorting the state governments to frame good policies, PM Modi ji will be well advised to actually start with his government. Otherwise, we will continue to see the exodus of students abroad.
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