Pharmacy colleges in Tamil Nadu are heading for a serious crisis with a steady drop in the number of students opting for the degree and diploma courses in the state's 80 colleges. Pharmacy colleges are reporting vacancies ranging from 20 to 60 per cent of the seats in different colleges. The state has a total capacity of 4800 seats.
A principal from a leading pharmacy college said that in ten pharmacy colleges of the state, more than 60 per cent seats are remaining vacant. Although, this is part of a general trend in the country, the crisis has seriously hit the managements of single colleges, he said. In Tamil Nadu, the current academic year was the worst in pharmacy college admissions.
Most principals of pharmacy colleges in the state said that there are many reasons for the decline in the number of students in pharmacy colleges during the current year. Growing craze for other technical courses such as B Tech, M Tech, MCA and Life Sciences courses like Microbiology, Clinical Research, Bio-Chemistry, Bio-Informatics and Bio-Technology is one of the main reasons. Sudden rise in the number of pharmacy colleges in the country without having consideration to the actual demand has also caused the increasing number of vacancies in the colleges.
Dr V Ravichandran, principal of Vel's Pharmacy College, said that more than 30 per cent of the seats in his college could not be filled up in the current year. And for the new Pharm D programme, the Vel's College just got only seven students, he said.
Dr B Jaykar, principal, Vinayaka Mission Pharmacy College, Selam, said he could not fill up 60 per cent of the seats for the two courses in the current academic term in his college. He said that one reason for the drop in the number is a steady decline in the flow of students from the neighbouring states especially from Andhra Pradesh, where there are 280 pharmacy colleges.
"Every year more and more new colleges are coming up in the country. We used to get students from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh in the past. Now new colleges have been started in those states and the flow of students from those states have stopped. Now, if the existing colleges have to survive, the government should stop commissioning new colleges. We have represented this matter to the AICTE some months back," Dr Jaykar told pharmabiz.
Currently, there are 800 Colleges all over India conducting degree and diploma courses in pharmacy today whereas the number was around 200 a few years ago. He said that there are some advantages to students in states like Andhra Pradesh, where the government reimburses the fees of students from the reserved communities apart from SC and ST. This attracts students of those communities to seek admissions only in government colleges.
Principal Dr T K Ravi of Ramakrishna College of Pharmacy, Coimbatore, said that about 50 per cent of the total seats in his college are now vacant. "During the last four to five years, the preference of the students going for professional courses has been changed and they are increasingly opting engineering and IT. This situation had affected the pharmacy colleges quite badly but hopefully they will emerge from their present predicament in the future," Dr.Ravi said.
Dr N Narayanan, principal of the Government Pharmacy College, Chennai, said this trend has not affected the two government pharmacy colleges in the state. As these are government colleges, fees relaxation to the students of the reserved communities are provided. The government colleges in Tanjavore and Coimbatore, conducting Diploma Courses in Pharmacy, are also having sufficient number of students, the principal said.
Dr T Elanko, registrar of Tamil Nadu Pharmacy council said there are 38 Pharmacy Colleges conducting degree courses and 42 colleges conducting diploma courses in the state. Recently, the course of Pharm D has been started in seven institutions. The total number of seats for degree course is 2280 and 2520 seats for diploma course.