 Nearly one hundred pharmacy institutions that opened in Bihar during the Covid pandemic period have no proper infrastructure and qualified faculties, hence their approvals need to be cancelled immediately, according to a letter written to the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) by the state branch of the Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA).
Further, the IPA finds that the institutions are failing to appoint qualified faculties and maintaining faculty-cadre ratio and disburse salaries to the teachers as per the statutory provisions.
No institution has a qualified professor or associate professor in any branch of the pharmaceutical science because as per the UGC norms, PhD qualification is essential to become a professor, which is lacking in the qualifications of teachers of these institutions. Unfortunately the private college managements are only hiring guest teachers rather than appointing qualified lecturers, IPA alleges.
The association has wanted the national pharmacy education regulator that if quick action is not taken the situation will jeopardize the pharmacy education in Bihar.
In addition to this burning problem, the state IPA has wanted the PCI to launch one teaching training program for the newly appointed teachers of the institutes to instill confidence in them and make them competent for teaching and thereby to improve the quality of the education just to become par with the south Indian states. The institution management should be instructed to establish proper infrastructure facilities to build a standard education sector for increasing the quality of the education. Currently all the institutions, except one or two old institutions, are failing to comply with the quality norms as per the guidelines issued by the PCI. This adversely affects the academic progress of the pharmacy students who got admissions in various institutions in Bihar. Students from all over the country have taken admissions in the colleges working in different parts of the state.
Talking to Pharmabiz, the secretary of the Bihar IPA, R L Bandyopadhyay said the paucity of quality of teachers has been there for years, but the situation has grown worse in the recent years after opening new colleges in the last four to five years without proper inspections. He says that the reasons for the shortage of qualified teachers are many, but the major one is due to the hiring of teachers from industries and hospitals without planning. Secondly no institution is ready to call for applications from qualified candidates and conduct tests and interviews as per the guidelines of the PCI and comply with the norms of the UGC. Thirdly, the working community pharmacists are assigned to work as teachers as guest lecturers/teachers, who are basically graduates or students of post-graduation.
Bandyopadhyay says that teachers working in educational institutions other than pharmacy have secured teachers training qualifications like B Ed or M Ed who are competent and skilled in teaching. Whereas in pharmacy education, the graduates, soon after their completion of the courses, become teachers of diploma course (D Pharm), and postgraduates are appointed as teachers for the degree course (B Pharm). They not only have any experience in teaching but also no knowledge in their subjects. These teacher-trainees are paid very little which the management likes to continue for a lucrative business. The PCI is not regulating colleges by conducting inspections, so the quality of the education is not progressing. He said this phenomenon is happening only in the state of Bihar.
In 2018, PCI had introduced a moratorium for opening new colleges for diploma course all over India. Then the IPA Bihar state branch had made a request to the PCI to exempt Bihar from the moratorium and allow a few diploma institutions in the state. Accordingly, the national regulator withdrew the ban in the state of Bihar and gave approval to all the institutions applied for. Since this happened during the Covid pandemic time, no proper inspection was conducted by the PCI for giving approvals to the institutions and for the course. Within two years there was a surge of pharmacy colleges in the state. Before that there were only two private institutions and one government college. Today Bihar has five government institutions and nearly one hundred private colleges.
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