Pharmacy education boom: amid forgery complaints, Maharashtra to reinspect colleges approved in last 3 years
Amid increasing concerns over mushrooming pharmacy colleges in Maharashtra leading to seats lying vacant, the state higher and technical education department has ordered a reinspection of colleges approved in the past three academic years. These institutions offering diploma, degree, and postgraduate courses in pharmacy allegedly submitted forged documents to obtain approvals from the central and state governments.
According to the order on the reinspection of pharmacy colleges granted approvals in 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25, the action is following complaints that these institutions submitted forged documents such as certified maps, non-agricultural certificates, possession certificates, utility certificates, etc., to the central and state governments.
Instructing the Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education (MSBTE) to reinspect all these colleges, the order states, 'The validity of the submitted documents must be verified with the concerned authorities and a detailed institution-wise inspection report must be submitted, stating whether all required academic facilities are adequately available in these institutions.'
The Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) has now issued a letter asking regional joint directions to conduct verification of required documents in accordance with the standard inspection format prescribed by the Pharmacy Council of India.
According to the DTE, there has been a considerable surge in the number of pharmacy colleges since the Covid pandemic, owing to greater awareness among students and parents about various career opportunities in India in the pharma sector. As a result, several colleges have come up.
In the 2022-23 academic year, there were 396 colleges offering 31,810 seats in the undergraduate Bachelor of Pharmacy courses. It increased to 515 colleges offering 41,282 seats in the academic year 2024-25. But a total of 12,714 seats remained vacant in B Pharma last year. Whereas in Diploma in Pharmacy, from 492 colleges offering 29,350 seats in academic year 2022-23, the number jumped to 685 colleges offering 40,570 seats in academic year 2024-25, when D Pharma recorded a vacancy of 12,404 seats.
Highlighting this surge, a senior DTE officer, said, 'With the increasing number of colleges, there is considerable vacancy in pharmacy courses. With students not taking admission to these colleges, there must be some issues with them, especially inadequate facilities required to run the course such as infrastructure, manpower among all. This reinspection will provide clarity.'
Welcoming the move, Dr Milind Umekar, national president of the Association of Pharmaceutical Teachers of India, said, 'Traditionally, a pharmacy college was allowed to offer masters course only after having ten successful years of offering bachelors' degree. But among the new lot of colleges, especially those mushrooming post Covid, several started with approval to offer both courses, without much inspection on whether they have qualified faculty and research facilities to offer higher level courses. The physical inspections will now ensure more accountability.'
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