By M. Naveed Alam
Medical and Dental Colleges’ Admission Test (MDCAT) for medical and dental colleges of Punjab province was held on Sept. 23, 2018. While the mainstream media reported the test was held smoothly at all 28 centers across the province, none raised pertinent questions which relevant data prompts us to ask.
The first valid question can be as to why there are more private medical and dental colleges than the public sector in Punjab? Also read this: Mushrooming of private schools in Punjab
The second could be as to why there are more MBBS seats in public medical colleges when these colleges are less in numbers than private ones? Doesn’t this mean these public medical colleges are overcrowded?
Third, there is huge difference particularly in numbers of public and private dental colleges. Why it is so? Against 11 private dental colleges, there are only three in the public sector. Why the government is not in position to start its own dental colleges?
Similarly, data about the candidates also raises some questions. Roughly, there are number of candidates is ten times more than the actual seats all medical and dental colleges combine offer. Shouldn’t there be more colleges? There could be many such questions. All we need is to seek help from data.
Main image: UHS, Lahore.