One important reason for increase in students’ interest in pharma is expansion in job market due to increased foreign investment in pharmaceutical companies
Dr Manasvi M Kamat
The Last couple of years have seen an unprecedented surge in Pharma admissions with the demand for engineering fast dwindling. New colleges have been setup; an increasing number of new institutions are seeking permissions to offer programs in Pharma while the seats which earlier remained vacant are being filled till the full capacity. Following the slowdown in engineering admissions and stringent rules imposed by the AICTE on engineering education, there has been a new proliferation of pharmacy colleges.
As the numbers are pouring, it is the issues dealing with quality that will have to be addressed. There is lot to be learned from the mistakes of the past. As more colleges are sanctioned indiscriminately, there is a fear that it would lower the quality of pharmacy education. The same did happen with engineering education. Equal attention is needed on the aspect of the equitable spread of these colleges. It also has to be ensured that the academic degrees offered by Pharmacy institutions remain relevant for the industry. Increasing proliferation of pharmacy colleges must not lead to unemployment for many graduating students and at the same time the young graduates must get an opportunity for a vertical academic growth. The facilities in colleges will have to be upgraded on a regular basis and all necessary steps taken to see that Pharma education will not meet the same feat as the engineering.
With a proliferation of pharma colleges in the country, the need to regulate their numbers and quality is an uphill task. More periodic surprise inspections aimed at ascertaining the quality of infrastructure, faculty requirements and lab records should be carried out. The parents and students should need to be vigilant while seeking admissions and seek to ascertain what has been promised in the glossy brochures exists if at all. Parents should also see a need to scan through the campus placement records to get a realistic idea of the institutional capabilities.
Will the Pharma degree remain relevant for the industry as the colleges will continue to churn out graduates is one important question? One important reason for the increase in students’ interest in pharma is the expansion in the job market due to increased foreign investment in pharmaceutical companies. With the strict policy adopted by regulatory authorities that all chemists’ shops are required by law to have a pharmacist the retail medical stores in the country are struggling to get qualified pharmacists. Thus there will be a tremendous demand for registered pharmacists and a dire need to increase the number of enrolments for the Diploma program. Thus the onus on maintaining the employability of the pharma graduates lie with the colleges. It must be ensured that mushrooming of pharmacy colleges should not lead to graduates with lack of requisite skills required by the pharmacies of tomorrow and the needs of multinational companies.
One way to address the above issue is by more number of colleges tying up with hospitals and pharma companies to enable students to develop first-hand skills by applying the experience of their lessons learned in the classroom. The other way to address this issue is by choosing to offer more specialisation choices to students rather than offering a plain vanilla course. Earlier, the traditional jobs would be in sales or marketing of pharma companies, production, quality control, formulation development and drug discovery of Indian drug manufacturing companies. Pharmacy institutions may now seek to offer studies in newer areas of scientific study in subjects like medical transcriptions, clinical trials, intellectual property rights, pharmaco-vigilance and in clinical data management.
There are over 1200 pharmacy colleges approved by AICTE working in various states in the country and among which the highest numbers are in Maharashtra. If the colleges are spread out across the state, people have better access to education they prefer. There is however a scarcity amidst this artificial and unhealthy plenty.
The regulators also have a task to ensure that there are enough seats for the PG and the doctoral program to give the young graduates opportunity for a vertical academic growth. Recently all the Principals of the Pharma colleges in Maharashtra made a written request to the authorities to set up National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) in their State. On the likes of the NIT’s, there is a scope to set up quite a few number of such institutions of excellence in each State with focus on PG courses and Research like so as to ensure quality education and add to the number of seats at the PG level.
The facilities in the colleges be upgraded on a regular basis and measures have to be taken to see that Pharma education will not meet the same feat as the engineering. Learning from the past, AICTE has called for a temporary ban on starting new colleges for a short period. It is felt that if more institutions were started it would result in unemployment among graduates and hence, AICTE Members sought a moratorium on grant of approvals for new pharmacy colleges from 2019-20 academic years onwards and is also coming up with a robust 10-year plan for all technical courses.
An improved educational system will enable pharmacy graduates to satisfy the requirements of the Pharma industry. As the industry continues to evolve the pharmacy education in the country will have to continuously transform itself. The dire failure of engineering education today poses right lessons for pharma education. We need to learn enough.
