Recently Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) president has requested all pharmacy professionals to support PCI to get rid of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) from controlling pharmacy education. Many people have written about the peculiar situation of dual masters for pharmacy education and resultant confusion, contradiction and contravention of pharma education control and standards. Now it has reached the climax that PCI president himself has to appeal for support. He has pointed out AICTE is preparing to have its own pharmacy education regulations in a tit for tat action against recently published PCI regulations.

Meddling middleman
Traditionally professional education is controlled and regulated by professional councils established by special Acts of Parliament and thus we have Medical Council, Pharmacy Council, Nursing Council, Teacher’s Education Council etc. Similarly a council (AICTE) was constituted to control technical education much later in 1988 as per AICTE Act 1987, but unfortunately pharmacy education also brought under its control ignoring the existence of Pharmacy Council since 1949, constituted as per Pharmacy Act 1948, for the purpose. Thus AICTE which came in the middle started meddling in pharma education. If it works for the betterment of technical education, as per its objectives, nobody would have objected it, but on the contrary AICTE has brought down the technical education standards in the last two decades.

AICTE’s track record
AICTE is the sole authority responsible for mushrooming of engineering and pharmacy colleges in India without proper facilities and faculties, thus brought down the standards. We can give many glaring examples and some were given in an article by this author as early as 2011. [A case of fence feeding on the crop, Pharmabiz, 6.6.2011]. One example is, in 2008-09 AICTE gave permission for nearly 300 pharmacy colleges in the united Andhra Pradesh alone!  A ten fold increase in number of pharmacy colleges in AP without any justification. There were neither experienced teachers nor infrastructure in these colleges. PCI president has openly criticized it then also in a press conference at Hyderabad. He told the press that PCI is trying to improve the standards of pharmacy education, but AICTE is spoiling it by its actions! Later after a few years we saw, the corrupt AICTE chairman was jailed and its member secretary thrown out. Noticing all these ‘leelas’ of AICTE and other councils only then Human resources minister and eminent lawyer Kabil Sibel tried to bring centralized councils for all technical and professional educations. But his efforts were successfully defeated by moneyed vested interests in these councils.

M. Pharm and AICTE
Though pharmacy education was under its control AICTE could not do anything when the so called Deemed Universities played havoc in M. Pharm education few years back. These universities admitted 150 to 200 students per branch of M. Pharm continuously for few years without needed faculties and facilities. After many people including this author exposed the fraud [Deemed Universities - Pulling down educational standards”, Pharmabiz 27.5.2009] somehow those huge admissions were stopped, that’s all. AICTE on its own or through UGC or court could not punish those greedy managements. M. Pharm degrees ‘purchased in absentia’ were not cancelled. It shows the inefficiency or unwillingness of AICTE in maintaining standards of pharmacy education. Why then they are trying to encroach entire pharma education now? To destroy it further?

Present scenario
Even now AICTE is giving permission to begin M. Pharm course with a minimum of 18 seats, going up to 40 to 50 per branch, to each of the college whoever asking, without inspection of infrastructure - I repeat - without inspection! The result is ‘M. Pharm education market’ has become a ‘buyers market’ as the supply is more than the demand. Now the students who seek admission in M. Pharm put forth the illegal demands that they will not attend the classes and the college should manipulate the records to give handsome internal marks and attendance! Thus the disease originated from the deemed universities started spreading and infecting PG colleges. Had the AICTE taken actions then against those universities as pointed out above, the disease would not have spread so far. The more dangerous fall out is some pharmacy colleges now started obliging those demands of students to fill the seats somehow. For the last two years, there is not even a bit of demand for M. Pharm seat in any college. Many colleges do not have single admission in some branches like M. Pharm Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Thus AICTE has killed the goose that laid golden eggs. All these were pointed out in this author’s yet another article titled ‘Problem of plenty’ published in ‘Pharmabiz’ dated 24.8.2011. It concluded as follows:

“Problem of plenty not only affects the new PG institutions, who have invested lakhs of rupees with the hope of getting it back in reasonable time, but also affects the faculty and employees of the existing colleges where too the admissions are less due to cut throat competition. Increase in M. Pharm seats has not automatically lead to increase in income to these colleges, but a cut in income! It is common sense that whenever income is less, people tend to spend less. So the college managements will try to reduce the expenses on equipment, chemicals, library and more importantly on salary and increments. Can AICTE prevent it? They have no history of protecting the poor teachers… Finally as a result of this unwanted supply [of excessive M. Pharm seats], everybody is affected starting from the colleges to teachers to students and ultimately the profession. Then who is benefited by this increase in seats? It is not difficult to guess”.

Thus we warned twice earlier, nobody took any action, now the result of zero admissions many pharmacy colleges are harvesting!

Deport AICTE
Once again let us warn if you still choose to ignore the call, even by PCI captain Dr. Suresh, pharmacy education will be reduced to ashes in the near future. This third appeal is to wake up the sleepy teachers of pharmacy colleges and to shake up the supporters of AICTE among them. A considerable percentage of pharmacy teachers still believe AICTE is better than PCI. Their arguments are: Only AICTE prescribed higher salary for the teachers; Only AICTE gives research grants and AICTE is a huge organization both in finance and magnitude. All these are myths or wrong notions: In majority of private colleges AICTE scale of pay is only in paper; Very few pharmacy faculties got research grants from AICTE and if you are united you can get such grants even from PCI. [PCI is trying hard to get more funds from central govt. Support its efforts; and big size of AICTE itself a problem.

Any short comings of PCI can be rectified by pharmacists but pharmacists cannot even dream of controlling AICTE because of its size and their size. As the saying goes, “it is better to be the head of an ant than the tail of an elephant.” Hence shutting the eyes to the misadventures of AICTE is equal to betraying young pharmacy students with dreams of bright future. Remember, if not the teachers who else can educate and guide the youth of this nation? Hence support PCI to deport AICTE.

For that pharmacy teachers can organize special meetings of professional associations in their colleges or outside and pass resolutions or prepare memorandums with signatures of all teachers and students and send or handover to ministers, parliamentarians and officials concerned. If there is a will, there is a way. Do it for the profession which is in danger and forget not it is feeding you!

(Author is ex-president, Indian Pharmacy Graduates Association, Madurai, Tamil Nadu)