Amid growing concern over the academic future of thousands of Indian medical students who returned from Ukraine after the Russian invasion, the Consortium of Deemed-to-be Universities in Karnataka (CODEUNIK) has stepped in to offer some respite.
The consortium, comprising eight universities, has resolved to accept 25 students in each year of the course and has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the proposal. “In our effort to contribute to the good work initiated by our Prime Minister, we have resolved to offer our proposal of accepting 25 students in each year of the course — aggregating to 125 students in each of our universities. These students will be imparted medical education to enable them to complete their course and we also wish to mention here that all our member-universities are well established over two decades,” said S. Kumar, secretary, CODEUNIK, in a statement released to the press.
Based on accounts of students who returned to India, one of the main reasons for the popularity of countries such as Ukraine for medical seat aspirants has been affordability, apart from the availability of seats as they are limited here.
“Any nominal fee as fixed by the government towards these repositioned students is acceptable to our group. This offer of ours will support the next major responsibility of the Prime Minister in ensuring uninterrupted education for these unfortunate students. This one-time offer from our consortium is subject to the due approval of statutory agencies — the NMC, the Ministry of Health, the Government of India,” read the CODEUNIK statement.
Dr. Kumar told The Hindu that it is now the moral responsibility of the government to accommodate these students. “However, this country has had some rigid standards in medical education. It is now up to the statutory authorities to assess the educational standards in that country. From reports, what we have understood is that agents have led them there. People who live there give a poor picture. We cannot confront them now. It is up to the authorities to evaluate,” he said.
Dr. Kumar suggested that if students do not match the standards of their counterparts in India, the consortium is willing to conduct a bridge course so they can become on a par with their students to avoid any stress to them. “We will leave the responsibility of choosing the students to the statutory authorities on a one-time basis. In India, medical courses are for 4.5 years. In each year, if we take 25 each, it will come up to 125 students, and this way, in eight universities, 1,000 students can be accommodated. All our universities are 35-40 years old and 16% more students added to our pool of 150 will not be a major compromise as we do have the infrastructure and staff,” he added.
