Crass commercialization and corruption of the Indian medical education system and the resultant decay of the Indian Health Education in the last two decades

A case for urgent international review and monitoring

Abstract

Indian medical education system has seen rapid growth in the last two decades. Private medical colleges now account for more than half of the 270 medical colleges in 2009. This unregulated unequal growth brings two issues to focus: the failing quality of medical education and implementing effective solutions to address an artificial faculty shortage due to faculty mal-distribution. The menace posed by the unfettered merchandisation of medical education has to be controlled and efforts should be made by the Government to ensure maintenance of standards and check the unplanned growth of substandard medical colleges and substandard education norms in universities or their constituent medical colleges. Since Indian Independence, MCI nor the University Grants Commission nor the constituent universities including the health sciences universities have never attempted to grade medical colleges as per their quality standards hence in the absence of health education quality standards, the student output from recent, hurriedly established recent science institutions is definitely substandard. There is a strong case for a review of the entire system of medical education and examinations in the country. Some solutions like increasing retirement ages of MD faculty to 70 years, sharing of faculty, increasing the total number of MD seats, allowing standard institutions like IIT’s to take over substandard colleges, allowing clinical MDs to teach para-clinical and pre-clinical subjects or temporary merger of specialties may address the widely publicized faculty shortage instead of relying on inadequately qualified MSc. nonmedical faculty.