AHMEDABAD: A career in medicine will get dearer for students in Gujarat after the state government's decision to bring all government medical colleges under a trust by 2010, which may hike the fees 20-fold.

Gujarat government has formed a Medical Research and Education Society to register all new medical colleges as self-financed institutes (SFIs) and the government is also actively considering to turn the existing six government medical colleges into SFIs in a phased manner.

The move is ostensibly to close doors to outside medical students. "The government medical colleges will be gradually transformed into SFIs. This will benefit Gujarati students. Because, in MBBS course 15 per cent seats are under all-India students' quota. In post-graduate (medical) courses 50 per cent seats are reserved for all-India quota," said health and family welfare minister Jay Narayan Vyas.

He said each year Gujarat's students migrate to other states owing to less number of medical seats here causing a loss of up to Rs 400 crore to the state. "In the next two year, medical seats will increase by 1,400 and turning them into SFIs will also help stop brain and money drain," he said.
This will mean that an MBBS student in Gujarat will henceforth shell out a minimum of Rs 5 lakh instead of the existing Rs 24,000 for the four-and-a-half-year course. The government runs six medical colleges in Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar and Vadodara.
For post-graduate medical students, the fee is slated to jump from Rs 6,000-9,000 per year to Rs 6 lakh.

A total of 1,200 to 1,300 medical students of Gujarat may bear the brunt of this hike. Vyas, however, said: "The SFI colleges' fees will be decided by the High Court appointed RJ Shah committee. According to rules, colleges cannot take fees more than what is recommended by the committee."

Manish Doshi, a student leader and member of Gujarat University syndicate, said: "Owing to this decision, poor students will not get a chance at a career in medicine. This will also mean that students with less percentage and more financial strength will get priority in government medical colleges."

source: TOI