The news of Pharmacy students being exempted from GATE with the year 2010 has come as a blow to thousands of students particularly those in the third year of Bachelor's of Pharmacy programme and who wanted to appear for the Masters Degree in Pharmacy.
GATE was conducted for students wanting to take up master's in 74 areas, including engineering, pharmacy, architecture and life sciences. But now the year 2009 will be the last year when the Indian Institutes of Technology, jointly with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, will conduct the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) for pharmacy students wanting to pursue their master's programme.
There are about 1,000 colleges offering pharmacy courses in India and a GATE-qualified student is entitled to a monthly scholarship of Rs 5,000. With this decision of the National Coordinating Committee, Pharmacy students will now have to queue up in front of private colleges where, admission standards might be compromised.
The valid question is now what will be the impact of this decision on present B Pharma students, on PG admissions and scholarship distribution? Pharmacy students formed the second-largest proportion of GATE aspirants after engineering graduates. Last year, about 20,000 students took the GATE for pharmacy. The decision has obviously aroused anger among student community who now want to take up the matter with the HRD ministry as the exam maintained merit and fairness in the admission process.
The reason for the shocking decision is given that IITs and IISc had to depend on faculty members from other pharmacy colleges to conduct the test, due to which it was getting difficult to ensure and maintain the same standards as that of IITs and IISc.
Whatever the reason, the decision makers should have first chalked out an alternative solution considering the future of thousands of students before coming to this verdict.
The future of thousands of Pharmacy graduates is in dilemma now. What to do? Which and how to approach colleges for PG admissions? Of course there may be framing of an alternative common nation wide entrance test, but who will take that charge, will the high standards be maintained that would be globally acceptable are some of the questions that are boggling every pharmacy student.
The HRD ministry must take a step towards making pharmacy an independent division like DBT and DST, which may take over the load of conducting such examinations and also may act as central body to provide funding for pharmacy institutes and students. There should be all India common entrance test conducted by either Pharmacy Council of India or any other independent body. This will not only give pharmacy an extra edge but also leverage credibility of Pharmacy entrance exam as it will be maintained by people specialised in Pharmacy field.
We are yet to see the final decision of HRD Ministry over the matter as to who will conduct the entrance exam for the M Pharma course. And for sure this is going to be big decision for aspiring Pharmacy graduates and post graduates.
