The new regulation of the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) is set to prevent malpractices of  absenteeism and inadequate qualification amongst teachers across the 2,300  pharmacy colleges in the country. A section of private pharmacy colleges are thus  working to ensure that  each pharmacy teacher would be issued with an identity or identification number to prevent unprofessional conduct.

The PCI notification mandating specific rules and regulations with regard to the qualifications for teachers in pharmacy institutions is the best that could have happened when pharmacy education is on a transformation mode, stated a section of principals of pharmacy colleges.

The list of teachers with their identity and photographs along with the place of employment must be made available on the PCI website to make the entire process foolproof. This list has to be updated on a regular basis or as stipulated by the PCI for every academic year (July 1 to June 30),  from next calendar year. Severe penalty should be imposed not only on the teachers but also on the institutions, so that, there will be no scope whatsoever for anyone to misrepresent facts and to mislead the authorities.

The PCI effort will now ensure India will be a platform to train  globally competitive pharmacy professionals, pointed out Prof S Mohan, director, PES College of Pharmacy and Dean, Faculty of Pharmacy, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences.

A regulation to  audit qualifications of teachers was long overdue. The mushrooming of pharmacy institutions, unfortunately, has led to  business interest and not to  impart quality education or training quality pharmacy professionals. In such a scenario, absence of specific guidelines for appointment of teaching faculty, has led to malpractices,  he added.

Airing similar views was Dr. Divakar Goli, Professor & Principal, Acharya & BM Reddy College of Pharmacy, who stated that  the level of violations was driven by the increasing number of colleges. This led a serious paucity of accessing teachers. Moreover, there are several instances where colleges too hired qualified lecturers working in pharma companies   only during inspections.

While colleges were able to save on salaries, the issue was that it impacted the future of students, added Dr. Goli.

The prerequisite of full time faculty for the core subjects is going to put an end to the wrongdoing where-in fictitious names were provided, said faculty from a section  of pharmacy colleges.

The clarity regarding qualifications of  post graduate teachers, stipulating five years’ of teaching experience after M. Pharm or three years’ of teaching experience after Ph.D. will ensure quality at post graduate teaching and learning. Otherwise, all and sundry have been teaching and guiding post graduate students. At this stage, what is of paramount importance is fixing the minimum requirement of publications to be eligible to guide M.Pharm students. Also, what is required is to  limit the maximum number of students that an approved PG guide can take up. The requirement for Ph.D guideship as well as the number of Ph.D scholars that one can guide at a time can also be stipulated, said Prof. Mohan.

Annually, over 1.3 lakh pharmacy students pass out and of which   60,000 are B Pharm and 40,000 D Pharm or diploma holders.