Like every other profession, pharmacy too is heavily regulated in our country. While the AICTE is mandated to provide approval to institutions for academic programmes, the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) is a statutory body constituted to regulate the profession and practice of pharmacy in the country. The approved pharmacy qualifications for registration as a Pharmacist under the Pharmacy Act 1948 comprise the following courses (Please scroll down for detailed careers options):
- Diploma in Pharmacy (D.Pharm) - 2 years
- Bachelor of Pharmacy (B.Pharm) - 4 years
- Pharm.D & Pharm.D (Post Baccalaureate) - 6 years
The PCI lists 596 approved institutions for awarding diplomas and additional 61 for conducting courses* only, 460 colleges for awarding degrees and 331 additional for only conducting the course*. Further more, 68 institutes are approved for offering Both Pharm.D and Pharm.D (Post Baccalaureate) courses. For the first time, we attempted to rank the pharmacy institutions.
* The students cannot register and practice as a pharmacist after studying in these colleges
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Ranking methodology
We started out by attempting a data-based ranking using Careers360’s proprietary Input-Process-Output methodology, and trained our cross-hairs on the 460 colleges, which are good enough to have had earned the privilege of awarding degrees. Though data has always been hard to comeby when it came to Pharmacy ranking we were in for a rude shock! Approximately 50 percent of the colleges simply didn’t have the Mandatory Disclosures uploaded on the websites. For those that had put the document in the public domain, they had disclosed only a measly amount of information within them. It seems the only way any institute wants to disclose information is through advertisements!
We went the perception way
The way we looked at it, if a student had to enrol in a pharmacy college and needed guidance in choosing the right one from him, who would be better to approach than the professors, principals and deans of the best pharmacy colleges themselves? So we shortlisted about 220 colleges from the universe of the 460 colleges in question, and e-mailed them a questionnaire and a college list. Not more than five responded. Then we shortlisted about 100 colleges, based on batch size, specialisations offered etc., and started calling up the Principals and Deans for knowing their opinions.
They were asked to rate the top 6/7 pharmaceutical colleges in the country. 37 principals responded to us. A college ranked first was given 7 points (for each ranking), ranked 2 was given 6 points and so on till a college ranked 7th was given 1 point. The points were aggregated and the colleges were ranked on the basis of the total points thus accumulated. The results are presented above.
They were asked to rate the top 6/7 pharmaceutical colleges in the country. 37 principals responded to us. A college ranked first was given 7 points (for each ranking), ranked 2 was given 6 points and so on till a college ranked 7th was given 1 point. The points were aggregated and the colleges were ranked on the basis of the total points thus accumulated. The results are presented above.
How does the list look like?
The list is an eclectic mix of public and private institutions. Invariably colleges with good faculty and great research have come on top. Though good infrastructure is a clear value-add, most deans do not give it as much importance. Institutes which are govt-owned and have been in existence for decades dominate the list, a fact attributed to their alumni strength and consequently placements. But all Deans invariably acknowledge the need for admitting good students.
Dean Speak
“Top 6 colleges, uh?” begins the Principal of a pharmacy college when contacted. “You want for my State?” “No Sir, all-India,” I revert. “In that case you’ll have to give me some time. I’ll need to check from some websites etc. You call me after two days,” comes the response. We are yet to hear from him.
Don’t think that such incidents were limited to the not-so-prominent colleges. We had the following conversation with the Dean of a pharmacy college that featured in the Top 10. I asked, “Sir, can you please tell us, which are the top six colleges in your opinion in the country?” He asked upfront, “That I’ll tell you, but is there some scope of writing an article in the ranking you are doing?” I suggested, “Since yours is a college which has been consistently ranked quite well, we would request you to contribute an article about the pharmacy sector or the scenario of education in Pharmacy.” “No, I want to write about my college only,” replied the adamant dean from whom we finally got no response. And we thought dealing with Deans would result in getting a more academic perception to the whole exercise!
Yet another Principal of a well-known private college tried to convince us that there was no way we could mix all pharmacy colleges because there were two distinct categories: one which had good students and well-qualified, stable faculty whereas the other had good infrastructure, facilities and good faculty interested in teaching, though the student quality may not be very good. A valid point, but he killed the observation by placing his own college on top in the second category.
On the positive side
Some Deans provided very perceptive and insightful comments. While the general refrain has been that rankings do not capture the value addition process sufficiently, some also commented upon the inability of objective data to capture the transformative process, that is education. A few Deans were so perceptive about their standing that the ratings they gave for their own colleges matched exactly with many other Deans, providing us sufficient confidence to publish the perception-based ranking.
An academic from a State Government University was candid enough to admit that many of his ilk were living on past reputations and their institutional infrastructure is in tatters. He also admitted that many new private institutes have better infrastructure and deep pockets. His contention was that a common admission process would help all colleges in the long run and the better ones could easily be gauged on the basis of student preferences. According to him, it is the possibility of a back door entry in certain private colleges that mars every private institution’s reputation. Unfortunately such academicians constitute less than 10% of the sample size who connected with us, yet again proving the wide disparity in the quality of academia in the country.
Way forward
Going the perception route for the first time taught us quite a few lessons. Some of the Deans have very little idea of the macro picture. Many academics do try to ruthlessly promote their institutions at any cost. But the positive dimension is that they do not constitute the majority. While macro-level awareness is definitely in short supply, honesty is not so, at least with the majority we spoke to. We hope for the sake of the students that the capability situation is better at the grass-root level, especially at the level of professors and support staff.
We sincerely believe that the final list we have proposed is a reasonably good representation of the reality in the pharmaceutical education scenario in the country. While all efforts have been taken to ensure geographic and institutional diversity in our sample size, we hope to improve our quality of data substantially. We also are in the process of filing a series of RTI applications both with the PCI and the AICTE. This would enable us to bring a much more comprehensive ranking backed by objective data in the coming year. Meanwhile you can dig your teeth into the current package.
| CAREER OPTIONS | |||
| Course | Duration | Eligibility | Job Profiles |
| D.Pharm | 2 years | PUC/+2 | Retail Pharmacy, Hospital Pharmacy, Community Pharmacy and Industry |
| B.Pharm | 4 years | PUC/+2 | Manufacturing, Quality Assurance, Marketing, Entrepreneurship |
| Pharm D | 6 years | PUC/+2 | Hospital/ Clinical/ Community Pharmacists, Clinical Research Organisations, Clinical trial Management, Medical Writing, Entrepreneurship |
| M.Pharm | 2 years | B.Pharm | Drugs control department, Manufacturing, Quality Assurance, Marketing, Regulatory department, Intellectual Property Rights, Quality Assurance, Clinical Research, Community/ Hospital Pharmacist, Entrepreneurship |
| Pharm D Post Baccalaureate | 3 years | B.Pharm | Hospital/ Clinical/ Community Pharmacists, Clinical Research Organisations, Clinical trial Management, Medical Writing, Entrepreneurship |
| PhD | Depends on the university norms and project undertaken | M.Pharm | Senior positions in Industry, Advanced Research, Scientist, in the areas like Pharmaceutical Pharmacology, Chemistry Pharmacognosy, Pharmaceutical Marketing and Administration, Regulatory Affairs, Intellectual Property Rights |
Source: Careers 360
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