All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to relax the norms for starting M.Pharm course in the pharmacy colleges in a bid to ease the problem of acute shortage of qualified pharmacy teachers in the more than 660 pharma colleges in the country.

As per the decision, any pharmacy college that has completed 4 years of academic existence can start the M.Pharm course. Earlier, AICTE used to give its nod to start M.Pharm course to those colleges which have completed at least two batches of B.Pharm courses.

Now, the colleges whose first batch of B.Pharm is in the final year can start the M.Pharm course. The decision will have immediate effect and all the colleges which have completed 4 years can introduce M.Pharma in their colleges in the coming academic year itself.

The decision to relax the norms in this regard was taken at a high level AICTE meeting held recently in Delhi under the chairmanship of AICTE chairman.

The decision will have a positive impact on the quality of pharmacy education in the country as the availability of qualified faculty will improve considerably in a couple of years. During the last some years, there were reports of several pharmacy colleges in the country, especially the private colleges that have mushroomed during the last some years, working without qualified faculty. Due to the acute shortage of qualified teachers, the colleges were left with no option but to appoint unqualified faculty members.

Ineffective inspection of pharmacy colleges by AICTE came quite convenient for the managements. Taking advantage of this laxity of AICTE in inspecting the private pharmacy colleges, the managements used to fill up their vacancies for teachers with incompetent staff who used to be present in the colleges only at the time of AICTE inspection, giving a severe blow to the standard of education.

The shortage of qualified teachers for pharmacy colleges has arisen mainly on account of a sudden increase in the number of pharmacy colleges in the country. The minimum number of teachers required in a pharmacy college is 16 and a large number of the current 660 colleges have come up during the last five years and many more are in the pipeline.