By: Rakesh Lohumi ( Sr. Editor-ICN GROUP )
SHIMLA: The digital initiative taken by the Medical Council of India for online monitoring of biometric attendance of faculty members in all the government and private medical colleges is a welcome step that needs to be extended to all the institutions of higher education across the country.
The problem of ghost faculty is not specific to the medical colleges, it is a common malpractice indulged in by the managements of private institutions, particularly universities and professional colleges.
With no effective mechanism to monitor the attendance on a real time basis the teachers are shown to be on the faculty of more than one institution and often they are paid sitting at home , they just show up for inspections by the medical regulator.
The new ‘One Country One Registration’ system, under which doctors will be issued electronic Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) registration card, will also go a long way in checking such malpractices.
The electronic registration will enable doctors to practice across the country by registering with the MCI one time, they will not have to get registered in the state. All these steps along with the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and the proposed National Exit Test (NEXT) will help maintain standards of medical education in the country.
However, similar measures are required for other streams of medical education like nursing and pharmacology, besides other professional colleges and private universities.. The problem of ghost faculty in these streams is much worse and they also have absentee students who seldom attend classes and manage to get degrees sitting at home far away.
The problem is not highlighted much as unlike the MCI,the UGC and other concerned regulatory bodies do not impose stringent conditions for approval of courses or carry out inspections to ascertain the status of infrastructural facilities and faculty.
In fact, besides online monitoring of attendance of faculty members , these institutions also require the system of biometric attendance for students. A common test on the pattern of NEET needs to be introduced for admission to various professional colleges and also for courses run by universities , which conduct their own tests creating problems who have to spend huge amount for purchasing expensive prospectus and appearing in multiple examinations.
Further, to check the menace of fake degrees the Adhar number should be mentioned in all the mark sheets, certificates and degrees right from high school onwards. With the government proposing to set up an autonomous and self-sustained National Testing Agency to conduct all entrance exams to higher education this will not be a difficult proposition.
The opening of private universities on a large scale without adequate and effective regulatory mechanism to oversee their functioning has severely affected the quality of higher education in the country. Most of them do not adhere to UGC norms and commit all sorts of irregularities in admission ,besides charging exorbitantly high fees from students.
