Is it beginning or end?

There is lot of cue and cry about vacancies in pharmacy courses which has reached alarming proportions that more than 50 per cent of the seats in these courses fail to attract students. First the problem started with D. Pharm course and spread to B. Pharm and now even to M. Pharm course.

Some are arguing the problem of not filling D. Pharm seats is due to rising of minimum qualification for admission, to +2 from 10th standard. [Pharmabiz 4th April 2012]. By extending the same logic shall we lower qualification for admission to B. Pharm too, to 10th standard? What to do with M. Pharm admission then, where too the admissions are pathetic?

The reason for low admissions is not the qualification for admission. It lies somewhere else. It is not that these peoples are ignorant about the reasons, but they try to fill the seats somehow at the cost of profession and society. The reasons can be listed as follows:

Unemployment among pharmacists; Low salary offered after completing the course;
Supply [of college seats] is more than the demand; and There is not even a ray of hope that the situation will improve in the near future. Let us scan these reasons:

Unemployment
We the teachers, are in contact with our ex students and know very well that majority of them or either unemployed or under employed. Almost they lost the hope of getting government jobs as there is open ban on recruitment by many State governments. In majority of private hospitals nurses are used for drug dispensing also, thus contributing for the miseries of pharmacists. Few boys somehow manage to get sales representative jobs, but girls who constitute considerable percentage of pharmacists are miserably depend on the most exploiting community pharmacies. These pharmacies offer lowest salary on part time basis. They are not ready to appoint these girls even if they are ready to do full time job. Apathy of law enforcing authorities is one of the main reasons for this state of affairs. These part time “honorary” pharmacists need not ‘visit’ the pharmacy to perform their duties, the drug sales register will be send to the homes of these girls - now house wives - for signature, in return for a very low salary sometimes in 3 digits, which they accept foolishly [or happily?] as extra income generated by sitting in their home. A set of pharmacists employed elsewhere also lend their certificates for this poor salary. This practice by community pharmacies is not due to shortage of pharmacists as focused by people with vested interest, but because it suits them very well. It also confirm availability of thousands of unemployed pharmacists, otherwise who will accept these exploitations?

Low salary
For fewer jobs available in private sector there is huge competition and consequently the salaries are reduced to barest minimum. The recent trend is to appoint them on meager consolidated salary. These salaries are very less than other professional diploma or degree holders. Present day parents enquire and come to know all these things before choosing course for their children. It is easier to enquire about pharmacy courses because no other professional is as easily approachable as the community pharmacist. The enquiry is because parents are going to pay lakhs of rupees to the self financing colleges which were not the case 25 years back. Who will waste the money by admitting their children in low prospect courses?

Supply and demand
It is well known that there is mushrooming of pharmacy colleges [even engineering colleges] disproportionate to demand. There are, for example, more than 300 pharmacy colleges in Andhra Pradesh alone in the place of 30 or so, colleges some 10 years back. What is the justification for this 10 fold increase in supply? It is the greedy people who try to test their luck by opening colleges just like grocery shops. The corrupt bureaucracy help them. As a result the supply of college seats is many times more than the demand. Then what is there to surprise if large numbers of seats are vacant in these colleges? The colleges have to blame themselves for this situation, not the minimum qualification for admission prescribed. When the seats are not filled they put forward unimaginable and backward demands, just to fill the seats. Even if we accept their demand for argument shake there is no guarantee that the seats will be filled consistently. As long as the reasons for poor admissions listed here persist the situation will not improve. Do you think job prospects will brighten for 10th qualified pharmacists at once?

Bleak future
Well, everybody knows this is today’s pharmacy education sector. Did anybody bothered to remedy the situation? If willing, these college managements themselves can pressurize the government to do something on the job front. Given their influence with those in the government [most of the MPs and MLAs own colleges] they can do something to alleviate the sufferings of their own old students. They are not ready even to lift their little finger which is proved by the short of demands they make. Two years back, this author has suggested how to take the profession forward without hurting anybody in the profession in his article. “Passing clouds or warning signals?” [Pharmabiz IPC special issue 10th December 2009] and when this was accepted and some progressive measures were announced by PCI president, I congratulated PCI by an another article - “Well done PCI, Keep it up!” [Pharmabiz 14th April 2010]. But deeds did not follow those sweet words. What happened to those announcements?

D. Pharm colleges can have another long spell of life, if existing lakhs of D. Pharm pharmacists are prompted or even compelled to do B. Pharm by offering incentives or scholarships or loan or paid leaves etc. Government can do it by deputing at least 20 to 25 per cent of its pharmacists to higher studies every year and these service candidates can be specially allotted to study condensed B. Pharm courses [as announced by PCI] in the existing D. Pharm colleges after some up gradation. Thereby not only the college managements but also teachers and other employees of these colleges and existing diploma pharmacists benefit. Ultimately the profession is upgraded and comment respect from public. Instead of supporting such progressive demands why one should pull the profession backward or allow being stagnant and rotten or die?

Moreover there is one misconception that once B. Pharm is made minimum qualification to practice the profession of pharmacy, all D. Pharm pharmacists will be thrown out of job. No, it is completely wrong; instead all of them will become B. Pharm graduates as per the above scheme, no matter even if it takes 10 to 15 years [Read the above articles for detail]. Accepting and adopting this scheme will be a new beginning, not the end to the profession of pharmacy. Are you for a beginning or end?