The Centralized Admission Policy (CAP) enacted by the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) will impede Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) students from getting admitted to the private medical and dental colleges in the province, a former dean of a KP-based medical college has revealed.
Under the CAP, students from across the country, regardless of their domiciles, can get admitted to private medical and dental colleges in any province through a centralized merit list devised after passing the Medical and Dental College Admissions Test (MDCAT) with a minimum of 60% marks.
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There are 167 private colleges all over Pakistan, of which 102 are medical while 65 are dental. Most of these private colleges are located in Punjab while KP has only 11 medical and 6 dental colleges, having a total of 1,425 seats. KP students who are unable to get admission in public sector colleges seek enrollment in these 17 private colleges.
The former dean said:
If our private sector is open to other provinces, then our own students will face difficulties in getting admission in these colleges because we can’t compete with Punjab in merit due its large population of students. Punjab students would fill most of the seats in KP colleges under the CAP.
KP based educationists have called on the provincial government to raise this issue with PMC to safeguard the rights of the students of the province.
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Previously, the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) had expressed apprehensions over the federal government’s decision to replace Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) with PMC as the apex medical and dental colleges regulating body under the PMC Act 2020 which was signed into law last month.
General Secretary PMA, Dr. Qaiser Sajjad, had said that PMC Act 2020 would compromise the standards of medical education in Pakistan, adding that new legislation would do little to improve the medical education standards in the country, rather, it would result in the complete opposite.
