Dim prospects: More than 50% future dentists stumble at first hurdle

Only 162 of the 365 private candidates who sat the BDS first-year exams have passed all papers

KARACHI: Hardly 44 per cent of dentistry students have managed to get through the first-year Bachelor in Dental Surgery (BDS) examinations, according to the results issued by the University of Karachi (KU) on Wednesday.

Of the 365 private candidates who sat the exam, held mid-December last year, only 162 have been declared successful by the KU examination department.

Most of the students failed the Anatomy paper – one of the six papers of BDS first year, The Express Tribune has learnt.

This year’s result is unprecedented. In 2010, around 307 candidates had appeared in the examinations and more than 80 per cent of them were declared successful. In 2011, almost 79 per cent of the 336 students who sat the exam had passed it.

The students allege that the anatomy paper was extremely difficult. “Many students were seen crying [after the exam] while a good number of them were completely at a loss,” said a BDS student of Jinnah Medical and Dental College, who requested anonymity.

“The standard of education at the private medical institutions is getting worse despite the collection of exorbitant fees from the students,” said a mother of one such student, who studies at the Altamash Institute of Dental Medicine (AIDM).

She added that a student has to pay Rs460,000 as tuition fee in the first year, and even when the result was not issued, another Rs400,000 were demanded by the college to be paid for the second year.

Zeerak Jarrar, a third-year student at the AIDM, was of the view that probably the first-year students had not prepared well for the exams. “The anatomy course cannot be taken lightly,” she said.

The dean of affiliated medical colleges, Dr S M Abbas Hussain, shrugged off the student concerns. “These students just want to create a fuss so that they may be declared successful without doing well in their exams,” he said. “They just want to collect their medical degrees without any hard work.”

Aminur Rehman, assistant examination controller at KU, said that the disgruntled students may submit their objections with the KU examination department through their respective colleges. He, however, clarified that the university will only scrutinise the errors in calculation of marks. “We are not authorised to change the marks awarded by the examiner,” said Rehman.

Number of failures at each college 

 

Private Medical College           Students Enrolled     Failed

Karachi Medical and Dental College     50                         12

Jinnah Medical and Dental College       44                        12

Liaquat College of Medicine & Dentistry68                        59

Sir Syed College of Medical Sciences      32                        30

Altamash Institute of Dental Medicine  98                        44

Fatima Jinnah Dental College                78                       45

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2012.

Correction: An earlier version of this article had incorrectly named the Liaquat College of Medicine & Dentistry as Liaquat National Medical College. The error is regretted.