More than half of private dental college seats not taken in state

MUMBAI: After three rounds of common admissions, including one mop-up round, more than 50% seats in Maharashtra’s private dental colleges remained vacant as of September 14.

As per information shared by the state Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), 622 out of 1,200 seats in private dental colleges were vacant and surrendered to individual colleges on Friday. These institutes had exactly one day — September 15 — to fill up all vacant seats at the institutional level. “Private institutes had one day to invite more applications and fill up any vacancies in their respective institutes. Most of the time, they manage to find takers in this round,” said Dr Pravin Shingare, director, DMER.

Shingare said most dental seats go vacant in the common admission rounds due to students’ ranks. “Students, especially those with low scores and ranks, can’t make it to colleges in

common admission rounds. They therefore approach individual institutes in the last round and block seats,” he added.

As per information shared on the DMER website, 283 of the vacant seats are from the 15% institutional quota whereas the remaining 339 seats have gone vacant in the 85% government quota.

“Last year too, while hundreds of seats remained vacant after common admission rounds, less than 40 remained vacant after the institutional round. These 40 seats belonged to institutes situated in remote locations of Khed and Ratnagiri, which students avoid every year,” said the vicedean of a private dental college in Pune. “We had received applications from students directly even before the last mop-up round was conducted. All our seats are taken now.”

Like MBBS seats, seats under the NRI (non-resident Indian) or institutional quota (15%) in dental institutes too are the ones that remain vacant, mostly because of the fee. As per Medical Council of India (MCI) directives, private medical and dental colleges can charge up to five times the regular fee (less is allowed, but not more than five times) for seats under the NRI quota. “All seats under the government quota get filled up but the problem is with seats under the institutional quota. Colleges need to figure out how to attract more takers for those seats,” said Shingare.