The road to hell is paved with good intentions, goes the maxim which applies to the current scenario in the field of medical education in Pakistan. In the good old days, after doing Intermediate, the high achievers used to get admission in medical colleges; no questions asked. And the system worked fine, producing wonderful doctors.
Subsequently, it was noticed that certain educational boards give unreasonably high marks to their students who would then capture disproportionately high number of seats in medical colleges compared to their more competent counterparts enrolled with other education boards. The anomaly was overcome by introducing a standardised test, which is now called the Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT).
All the successful pre-medical students who want to get admission to any medical or dental college/university in Pakistan have to qualify MDCAT to enter the fields of medicine and dentistry. It was introduced in the country with good intentions to end the disparity in capability assessment method and to harmonise different marking criteria prevalent among various educational boards.
MDCAT initially succeeded in bringing uniformity. All the candidates were assessed through the same yardstick. But then politics crept in, as it always does. This year, medical colleges/universities in Punjab adopted double standards, with students getting assessed by two different MDCAT systems. The harder one was conducted by Punjab, and the easier one was conducted by Islamabad, the federal capital.
In Punjab, only 178 students could secure more than 90 per cent marks, whereas in Islamabad, around 1,000 students crossed that threshold. To add insult to injury, students from Islamabad are allowed to capture all the available seats anywhere in Punjab. This has made a mockery of the concept of standardisation.
Just a few days before the test was scheduled, when the paper had already been settled, Islamabad opened the portal and allowed the candidates to change their ‘province’. I definitely have no objection to federal board students sitting the exam under the Punjab category, but in that case, the same yardstick should have been applied for assessment purposes, which was not the case.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan and the authorities concerned should take notice of this dual standard to save the future of students belonging to Punjab.
MUHAMMAD EJAZ
FAISALABAD
