MCI recommends higher Student Teacher Ratio for PG Medical Courses

The move is expected to lead to substantial rise in PG seats across government medical colleges.

New Delhi: In a move that would lead to a substantial rise in the PG medical seats across government medical colleges, the Medical Council of India is reported to have given a go-ahead to the increase in the required student to teacher for offering medical courses at government medical colleges.

TOI reports that this comes after the MCI unanimously adopted a proposal to increase the ratio of students and teachers for post graduation courses at medical colleges. The proposal is reported to have following salient features.

• MCI has decided to increase the teacher-student ratio from 1:2 to 1:3 for professors and 1:1 to 1:2 for associate professors (team leaders)


• The change would be applicable only for professors and associate professors, and not assistant professors.


• However, each teaching unit cannot admit more than four students per year.


• The increase would not entail any augmentation in number of teaching beds for the unit which would continue to be 30. However, the increase would be granted only if bed occupancy is minimum 90% instead of prescribed 80% as of now.


• According to sources at MCI, the move will be only applicable to clinical specialties as well as only to government institutions.

The proposal recommendations will now be forwarded to the government for approval, post which the government will make amendments to the act and then take out the respective notification.

The move is expected to create a sharp rise in the availability of PG seats in the light of huge shortage of specialist doctors across the country .It is expected that the move is going to add 2500-3000 increased PG seats across government medical colleges.

In Maharashtra itself, the move is expected to addup to 1,200 new postgraduate medical seats in Maharashtra's government medical colleges, Vice-Chancellor of Maharashtra University of Health Sciences(MUHS) Dileep Mhaisekar informed TOI

"An important meeting of MCI was held in Delhi on Friday to discuss the issue of post graduate (MD/MS) seats. Due to less number of seats for post graduate courses, many deserving students are lagging behind," said Mhaisekar, who had presented the proposal regarding this to the MCI earlier this year.