Health ministry mulls taking over medical admissions

Health ministry mulls taking over medical admissions

Hemali.Chhapia@timesgroup.com

Mumbai:31.01.2021

The high-stress medical admissions, which involve frantic travel, emotional drama and last-minute financial deals, may be eased from next year.

In what may promote transparency and weed out agents and deal-makers who auction medical seats, the ministry of health is contemplating taking over the entire admission process, from start to finish. With that, institutional seat-filling— which experts describe as a “seat-auctioning round” or the absolute last leg of the admission process requiring students to visit medical school campuses to pick unfilled seats—may be scrapped. Instead, all admissions may take place online.

The Medical Counselling Committee handles admission for deemed universities across the country and after it closes online rounds, vacant seats are filled by respective institutes at their individual level. That is when, experts say, parents and students are put through immense “financial distress” as NRI seats, the ones that are five times higher than the regular seats, largely remain unfilled.

“What happens is that when students visit colleges for the last round, they feel cornered as there are merely three days to close admissions and how much can they travel? Deemed universities make candidates wait till the last minute as they try to fetch the highest price for each seat. With the process going online, all this will be streamlined,” said a health ministry source. The ministry may have to move court to change the admission procedure.

CD (cutting deals), CC (cash component), N2M (NRI-to-management conversion) are the terms every aspiring doctor is aware of. “So, when candidates visit these medical colleges in the last round, negotiations take place. The benchmark for admission is only one: the ability to pay the highest sum for a seat; that is the only merit,” said Sudha Shenoy, parents’ representative for medical aspirants.

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The health ministry move, if implemented, will bring about much-needed transparency in medical admissions. Parents and students often complain that colleges demand cash and show seats were given away at the last minute at discounted rates. But in a country where lakhs aspire to join the MBBS programme and seats are rather few, taking the admission process entirely online will ensure merit is respected and cash deals and auctions are done away with.