Foreign medical degree mills

The recent National Registration Examination results are an indictment of the standards of many foreign medical schools, which seem to spend most of their budgets on ads to attract more students, rather than on educating them. Only about 20% of foreign-trained medical and dental graduates passed the exam this year, exposing a crisis that endangers public health and preys on aspirational families.

This abysmal pass rate — 21% for medicine and a shocking 7% for dentistry in the latest session -— is not an anomaly but a pattern, repeating from a 25% pass rate just six months prior. Incidentally, the pass rate for dentists in the previous exam cycle was 0%. The Pakistan Medical & Dental Council has rightly urged caution, warning that substandard institutions waste "hard earned financial resources" and "precious time".

But this is not just a Pakistani problem, but a global one. Take the case of Saint James School of Medicine in the Caribbean. The US Federal Trade Commission found that it falsely advertised a 96.77% exam pass rate for the American medical licence exam to lure students, when the actual pass rate was just 35%. It also inflated residency match rates by about 20%. The US government in 2022 fined the varsity $1.2 million and canceled student loan debts for many victims.

Similarly, a scam was unveiled in India earlier this year where consultants were forging academic documents to secure admissions for medical students in foreign universities, and there is evidence of similar unscrupulous practices in Pakistan. Some Pakistani students at medical colleges in Central Asia and other heavily promoted for-profit varsities have also complained about the massive gap between the marketing pitch and reality when they got there.

Pakistani medical regulators can take pride in the fact that their stringent exam has weeded out the unqualified. Now they must work with regulators around the world to shut down diploma mills, while also helping teach prospective students and their families to identify scam schools.