No limit on exam attempts,CSMMU faces student backlog

However,the MCI could not change the rules for just one university. “There is no such problem in any other medical college and we have not received such complaint from anyone else,” he said.

The CSMMU has 38 students who have been failing for several years and are yet enrolled in the MBBS course. Earlier this month,CSMMU VC Dr DK Gupta had written to the MCI,urging it to reconsider its earlier decision which allows failed students to keep making attempts indefinitely. Gupta had said in the letter that 38 students of CSMMU have failed to clear their first professional examinations in spite of as many as five to 11 attempts and one of these students was from the 1985 batch.

Gupta proposed the criteria for repeated failure students,including a maximum of three attempts in one ‘professional examination’,a maximum of six attempts in all three professional examinations and a total of double the period of MBBS course as maximum period in which the course should be completed. As Scheduled Caste students were alleging caste bias by the varsity,Gupta has also requested the MCI to appoint a panel of examiners for conducting theory and practical examinations.

During his convocation address,Dr Talwar expressed concerns over the falling standards of education in medical sciences across the country and said that public-private partnership based models for medical education might be the answer. He said that with fast expansion of medical institutions,which have reached from 150 in 1995 to 335 today,the quality of medical teaching and training programmes got diluted.

He expressed concerns over the rise in the fee of medical education,because of which meritorious students were left behind and non-meritorious students are becoming doctors. He further said that setting up and running a medical college requires huge expenditure and “perhaps the government may even consider public-private partnership based models in the field of medical education.”