The Association of Pharmacy Teachers of India (APTI) has urged the government to take over the struggling self financing pharmacy colleges spread across the country. APTI state branches will soon approach all the state governments in this regard as the future of many of these colleges is in the dark due to lack of sufficient number of students, according to Dr PG Yeole, president of APTI.

In an interview with Pharmabiz in Hyderabad, Dr Yeole said that for all the self financing colleges, about 90 per cent of the cost of education, which includes salary, contingency, non-contingency and other developmental expenses, is met by the government in the way of reimbursement of tuition fees for the BC, OBC, SC-ST and OEC candidates. This fee is fixed by each college on the basis of their previous year’s expenditure. The fee fixation commission has fixed a rate as per a verdict by Supreme Court in 2005. So this reveals the fact that, in effect, the self financing colleges are also fed by the respective governments of the states, then why can’t these colleges be taken over by the governments, he asked.

Yeole further said that even though the pharmacy education sector has made a significant growth during the last one decade, some kind of confusion still exists in the academic arena and such confusion must be eliminated for the sake of this growing sector. It has so far not been cleared whether the pharmacy course is a technical course or para-medical course or a course of pharmacy alone. He said in some universities it is under the faculty of engineering technology and in some others it is under medicine faculty. In the universities in the national capital, it is under the faculty of science. Yeole said very few universities have separate faculties for pharmacy.

Besides, he continued, the lack of uniformity in syllabus and differences in the exam patterns also do confuse the students and teachers. The modern course, Pharm D, is also not without confusion in its conduct and status.

APTI has put a set of suggestions before the government to save the pharmacy colleges and the education sector and the prominent of them is that government should stop permission to new colleges. Without considering the actual need of the society, permission is given for starting new colleges and most of them have no takers. Eventually, this paves the way for closure of so many established colleges, wherein the teachers are in the middle ages of their career. He said in AP, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, a number of colleges are on the verge of closure due to the dwindling number of students. The mushrooming of the colleges also cause unhealthy competitions.

In 1932, there was only one pharmacy college in the country, at Banaras Hindu University. In 1952, the number was only three, but in 2000, the number rose to 300. During the last one decade, there was a marked growth and crossed the number 1000 and reached 1086. The intake capacity of all the colleges comes around 70,000. But the job opportunities for all the graduates coming out of these colleges every year are becoming less, Yeole said.