Dental Course Loses Sheen

The state may in the near future face a severe shortage of dental professionals if the statistics gathered by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) is any indication. Most of the seats for dental course in colleges across the state were being left unfilled for the past three years.

To overcome the problem, the state government is planning to propose to the Dental Council of India and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) to change the eligibility requirement of admission to dental course.

"The government is planning to request both the bodies to fix minimum of 40% marks to enter dental course," said one of the top officials from the department of higher education on condition of anonymity.

RGUHS recently announced there will be no changes in eligibility criteria, one must have to score minimum of 50% marks to get admit in to dental courses. "This shows that the government's proposal will be rejected from RGUHS," added that official.

There are 39 dental colleges with 2,600 seats in the state. Of this, 846 seats have to be filled from the government quota and 1,745 from management, and the rest nine (this number varies from year to year) seats for all India quota.

Unfortunately, in 2008 out of 840 government seats 566 left unfilled.

"The compensation package of the junior dentists must improve, as that is the main reason why students are not opting for dental course. Senior dentists have not created an environment for juniors," said S Kumar, secretary, Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K).

Via DNA