Biggest-ever addition to government MBBS seats: 2,750 seats in 25 new colleges

The academic year 2019-20 will see the biggest addition of medical seats in government colleges in a single year with 2,750 seats in 25 new government medical colleges having been created. Though the government has been on a significant expansion spree in medical seats since 2012 after decades of sluggish growth, the process has accelerated in the last two years with new colleges being created and existing ones also increasing seats with the help of central funding.

The biggest stumbling block to the expansion of medical education has been inadequate availability of faculty, a problem that persists despite the government repeatedly diluting faculty requirements. With the private sector too adding 10 new colleges in 2019 accounting for 1,500 seats, the minimum faculty requirement for the 35 new colleges is well over 3,000 - over 600 professors, 1,000 associate professors and almost 1,500 assistant professors. With even existing medical colleges struggling to find faculty, medical educationists are concerned that this could lead to more unethical practices like ghost faculty and poaching of faculty from established government colleges. Former Union health secretary Sujatha Rao tweeted: "Where do they get the faculty from? How do they ensure quality of training? Choice seems to be between having a shortage of doctors and ill-trained doctors."



Dr Vinod Paul, chairman of the Medical Council of India's board of governors and member of Niti Aayog, told TOI that measures such as increasing the retirement age and getting those retired from the armed forces to come back to teaching had already been initiated to address the issue.

In 2018, the government added 18 colleges and the private sector five. The minimum faculty requirement for these would be 2,000. In 2017, 13 colleges were opened requiring over 1,100 faculty. In 2016, 30 colleges were opened. The faculty requirement for these would be about 3,000. Thus from 2016, over 100 colleges were opened requiring over 9,000 teachers. The question is whether there is adequate faculty available for this level of expansion.

With the expansion in 2019, there are now 70,978 MBBS seats in 529 colleges in India. Of this, 269 colleges accounting for 35,688 seats are government-run, while the remaining 260 colleges accounting for 35,290 seats are in the private sector.

While new government colleges typically get just 100 seats, 94 out of 108 private colleges opened since 2010 got 150 seats each. In the same period, only 30 of 123 new government colleges got 150 seats. This tendency to grant private colleges more seats is despite that since 2010, 15 private colleges were either barred from taking students or shut down, in most cases because of inadequate patient load and faculty.

While it makes sense to give fewer seats to an institution just being set-up, why the same logic not apply to private colleges despite having a bigger problem in getting patients to a new set-up?