Fee and fair: New rules to regulate education at private medical colleges

Presently, the high fee charged by most private medical colleges makes it impossible for thousands of meritorious students to get admission.

In what may come as a relief to thousands of medical aspirants, the Union Health Ministry has asked the Medical Council of India (MCI)'s Board of Governors (BoG) to prepare draft guidelines for the fee structure in private medical colleges and deemed universities from the next academic session.

In its letter to the BoG, the Health Ministry said, "The Commission on its constitution will frame guidelines for determination of fee which may be enforced from the academic session 2021-22."

"It has been desired that the BoG may prepare draft guidelines for determination of fees and all other charges of 50 per cent of private medical colleges and deemed universities as envisaged under the NMC Act 2019 so that the Commission on its constitution may utilise the same and so that it can be enforced from the next academic session--2020-21 -- onwards for both UG and PG medical admissions," the letter read.

How medical aspirants stand to gain by fee regulation

The Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 had no provision for regulation of fees in private medical colleges.

At present, some states regulate fees of some seats in private colleges through MoUs signed with college managements. In addition, the Supreme Court has set up committees chaired by retired high court judges to fix the fees in private colleges as an interim measure. Deemed to be Universities claim they are not covered by these committees.

Nearly 50 per cent of total MBBS seats in the country are in government colleges, which have nominal fees. Of the remaining seats, 50 per cent would be regulated by NMC.

This means that almost 75 per cent of total seats in the country would be available at reasonable fees.

Business Standard

DMK promises to abolish NEET, bring back old pricing for petrol & cylinders

A separate budget for agriculture, loan waiver for students, free electricity are other poll promises for Lok Sabha 2019 elections.

The M K Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has promised to abolish the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), formerly the All India Pre-Medical Test, as part of its poll promise.

The party, which has joined hands with the Congress for the upcoming LokSabha election has also promised to bring back the old pricing models for petrol & gas cylinders.

DMK President Stalin released the party’s election manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls scheduled for April 18 in the state.

The other promises of the party include metro rail projects for Madurai, Trichy, Coimbatore and Salem, and permanent Indian citizenship for Sri Lankan refugees currently living in camps in Tamil Nadu.

The party also promised to release seven prisoners jailed in the Rajiv Gandhi assassin case, loan waivers for students, a separate budget for farmers at the Lok Sabha, free electricity for weavers, museum at Keezhadi, 0.5 per cent GDP for natural disasters, MNREGA up to 150 days.

The other poll promises include bringing back the Sethusamudram project, reduction of cable TV prices, a new law will be introduced to prevent sexual harassment through online, Old pension scheme for Government employees Education to be brought back into state list Expired Toll gates on highways will be removed.

Business Standard

NEET 2018: SC scraps grace marks awarded to students who took exam in Tamil

SC also directed that from the year 2019-20 onwards the NEET-UG Examination will be conducted by the National Testing Agency.

The Supreme Court on Thursday quashed the Madras High Court directive to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to grant 196 grace marks to students who suffered from the erroneous Tamil translation of 49 questions in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for undergraduate medical admissions.

"The method adopted by the High Court is manifestly arbitrary and unjustified and cannot be sustained," the top court said in its judgement.

The apex court observed that the court has made no attempt to see whether the students have in fact attempted answers to the questions, which were claimed to be imperfectly translated and has proceeded to award the full marks for 49 questions to all candidates who had opted to give the examination in Tamil.

The court also directed that from the year 2019-20 onwards the NEET-UG Examination will be conducted by the National Testing Agency and the bilingual examination will be conducted after the question paper is translated as set out according to the instructions in the affidavit dated October 22, 2018, signed by Dr Vikas Gupta, Director, National Testing Agency.

On July 10, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court directed the CBSE to award additional marks to students who wrote the NEET in the Tamil language in 2018.

As per the ruling, four marks each will be awarded for each of the wrongly-translated 49 questions, following which a new ranking list will be put out in two weeks.

49 questions were wrongly translated for students who wrote the NEET in the Tamil language in 2018, after which a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed regarding the same.

The NEET was conducted on May 7 this year, for which over 1.3 million candidates appeared across the country.

Business Standard

MHRD announces entrance dates; JEE Mains to be held twice in 2019

All the exams will be computer-based except for NEET, which will be conducted in pen-and-paper mode.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) on Tuesday announced the schedule for various entrance examinations till May 2019 to be conducted by the newly-established National Testing Agency (NTA).

It announced the schedule for UGC-NET, JEE-Main I & II, CMAT & GPAT, and NEET-UG.

All these exams will be computer-based except for NEET, which will be conducted in pen-and-paper mode as before. This mode of writing exam was kept unchanged at the request of the Health Ministry.

"The change in the NEET exam pattern (as against the statement made on July 7, 2018) -- which will now be a single exam in pen-and-paper mode and in the same number of languages as has been conducted last year -- is on the request of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which wanted the same pattern as last year's to be maintained," the HRD Ministry said in its statement.

While declaring the establishment of NTA, the Ministry had in July said that all these exams will be conducted online.

As per the schedule announced on Tuesday, the UGC-NET will be conducted on several days during December 9-23, 2018; JEE-Main I on days between January 6 and 20, 2019, while JEE-Main II will be held between April 6 and 20, 2019.

The CPAT-GMAT entrance, earlier conducted by the All India Council for Technical Education, will be conducted by the NTA now on January 28 and NEET-Undergraduate on May 5 next year.

The Ministry said that through NTA it has also established 2,697 Test Practice Centres (TPCs) in schools and engineering colleges for candidates to practice and familiarise themselves with the pattern of the exams.

These centres will be available to the candidates on Sundays and Saturdays starting from September 1 and will be free of charge.

"The TPCs will have a downloaded Computer Based Test (CBT) which will be similar to the actual test to be conducted on the exam day.

"The practice tests will help the candidates familiarise themselves with logging into the system, going through the detailed instructions regarding the test, using the mouse or numeric keyboard on screen (virtual) for attempting each question, scrolling down to the next question, navigating between questions, reviewing and editing their options and submit questions," the statement read.

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