THE new Pakistan Medical and Dental College (PMDC) management seems to have got its priorities all muddled up. It has started a tug of war with the private medical colleges over admission criteria and admission tests.
Instead of focusing on its core responsibility as a regulator of medical education, it has started chasing red herrings like National Testing Service for private medical colleges.
Perhaps the underlying motives are not the improvement of medical education but encroaching upon the domain of private medical education providers.
Private medical colleges have come into beingas a consequence ofthe classic demand and supply mismatch. The government failed to spend the requisite percentage of GDP on medical education, resultingin a doctors`dencit.
The private sector stepped in to fill the void and to provide medical education to those students who could not get admissions to the limited number of government-run institutions. The private sector filled the gap admirably well but like all private enterprises the medical education had a cost that had to be borne by the students.Now instead of doing its main job of vetting the curriculum, clinical facilities, and faculty standard, the PMDC has started meddling into the admission process, barring private medical colleges from holding their own entry tests.
The world over private medical education is costly and requires heavy investments by service providers. Though it is true that in the past some unscrupulous elements tried to provide substandard education out of commercial avarice, it does not mean the PMDC should hold all private medical colleges culpable and meddle unnecessarily in their admission process.
Soon most of the private medical colleges would be forced to go into litigation against the PMDC`s meddlesome attitude.
