In quest of the perfect answer

The murder of examinations begins at the school level. The photograph and its caption are lucid enough. Graphic details of the process are available all over the news.

The process continues in the private dental colleges, with all the help that the managements can provide. In fact, in certain states, students consider it their birthright to receive such help.

Some universities do take proactive steps to upset the colleges' determined efforts to help their students. One such step is to send the theory answer sheets to external assessors / examiners whose identities are concealed from the colleges and examinees. Yet, time after time, answer sheets of such students come back with very high marks, even though their actual performance in the viva voce and practical examinations leaves much to be desired.

How does this happen? The process is simple but magical.

The student submits an absolutely blank answer paper, which had been issued by the university and signed by the invigilator. The answer sheets are then sealed in a packet and kept in safe custody by the chief invigilator / Principal / college management within the college premises.

At night, the answer sheets miraculously appear out of the sealed packet, and come back to the examinee - accompanied by a solved set of answers for the relevant question paper. The examinee has all night to copy the answers in his own handwriting into the university-issued answer paper, before the sheets mysteriously go back into the packet and seal themselves in before the sun rises. The packet is subsequently sent to the respective university for assessment.

The expenses are small change, compared to the tuition fees being paid for receiving the degree.

In another (less common) method used, selectively dyslexic clerks / data entry operators at the university transform a 17 into 71 while entering a student's marks on a computer. The answer papers are subsequently sealed and archived, with no one the wiser.

The perfect answer is my birthright, and I shall have it!

Studying is easy - and teachers are redundant

So there's this motorist driving fast down the road while engrossed with his mobile phone. The traffic police stop him and ask for his licence.

Motorist points to the large L sign on his car and says, But I am just learning to drive!

- Learning to drive? But where is your trainer? And you are using a mobile phone while driving!
The motorist waves his mobile phone at the cop and says, I am a student of IIN.

Fast-track seats for sale - conditions apply

The attraction of making a doctor or dentist out of one's child seems to be on the wane for quite a few years now. Dentistry as a profession is not financially attractive any more - the topic for a later post. Yet, 300+ dental colleges (of which 40 are government-run), with an inventory of around 25,000 undergraduate (BDS) seats and over 4,000 postgraduate (MDS) seats, need to find gullible folks who are willing to contribute to the college owners' profits, year after year.

So colleges perforce need to offer some freebies as their USP, to attract students. One freebie, of course, is to promise that students would not fail. Another USP offered by some colleges is to allow students - and especially postgraduate students - not to attend college regularly. Their names are enrolled with the University and the Council, but some attend college for a few days a month, others only for a few days in a year.

These seats command a much higher price. And the Chairman laughs all the way to the bank, because an absent student who pays more means double profits for him - more money received, as well as more indirect savings, because the student is just not there to use the college's resources. In effect, the visiting student.

Despite their best efforts to retain them, colleges, however, do lose students midway through the course. Realization dawns on some folks a little late in the day, that the profession of dentistry is not for them. So, having paid their fees partly and wasted some months or even a year or two, these students simply stop coming. As a result, the college stands to lose the uncollected fee for the rest of the years, but cannot, according to rules, admit someone in the middle of the course, say for example, in third year. In fact, there are often not enough students applying, to fill up the available number of seats. And empty seats mean losses.

But there are those who firmly believe in the Indian systems of jugaad (innovative quick fix) and full paisa vasool (bang for the buck). And the Chairmen of dental colleges indulge in the cutting edge of jugaad and paisa vasooli. So those empty seats suddenly get filled a year down the line. How does that happen?

The Council and the universities receive a list of students admitted to their affiliated colleges every year within the cut-off date. The Council of course, never opens up that list to check whether the same people qualified some years later. The universities do, though. And here is where a setting is necessary between the college and the university. Clerical staff in the universities are more than happy to change or add students' names to the original list, in exchange for a few thoBDS in 3 years instead of 4, or an MDS student to get his degree in even one year.

College managements make a commitment that any student will pass the university examinations.Whatever year they might join the course. But fast-tracking the course and saving a year or two of one's life costs money - and students are only happy to pay up!

Taking care of the golden goose

Never, ever, ever, cause stress to a student by pressurizing him to study hard. His father's money pays your salary, and it is never a good idea to stress out the goose that lays golden eggs. And if (s)he does not pass in the final examinations in one attempt, no one pays us extra money for the additional six months that we have to bear with him. So get them to pass, and get rid of them.

 Not everyday does one come across such charming advice, but many a Chairman of private dental colleges in their rare jovial and chatty moods have shared this nugget of wisdom with their faculty members. So much so, that most faculty do not really dare to stop any student (and especially if it is a post-graduate student) from appearing for an examination for lack of attendance, incomplete or poorly done course work, bad dissertation or even downright anti-social behaviour.

The only reason (s)he would ever be stopped is if the college management somehow discovers that there are unpaid dues - or even some extra money that can be collected from the student due to some alleged misdemeanour. To this end, the faculty is encouraged to report chronic absenteeism, incomplete work quota, alleged ragging, improper uniform and such other slip-ups by the students, directly to the Principal and / or management, instead of taking any action at the departmental level. This always results in a monetary penalty (unless the student's father is well-connected, or is a friend of the Chairman).

Students with even an abysmal 10% attendance are eligible to appear for their University examinations on payment of an attendance booster fee. Since the onus of keeping track of a student's attendance is on the college - universities don't check such mundane things! - whatever attendance data is sent by the college to the university is considered to be final.

On the other hand, departmental staff keep getting smarter too. It would be sacrilegious for them to receive any personal gain from a student - if such a matter is reported to the management, he would certainly lose his job. But asking students to contribute towards the improvement of the department is always a good thing. Not only does it help spruce up the department for inspectors to feel happy about, it also receives the blessings of the Principal and management. Students are therefore asked to contribute useful items like charts, photographs, curtains, projector screens, printers, printer ink and other consumables, notice boards, signboards, small dental equipment, dental materials etc. Even refreshments for external examiners are sometimes procured through fund collection by post-graduate students.

The students are also aware that in exchange for the money they pay out, they would not be harassed to work/study hard, or risk failure in their examinations. The money practically guarantees cooperation!
 
What's a few thousand rupees extra, when the students are already paying a few lakhs for their educa... err... degree certificate?

The fearless student and the fearful teacher - Part 2

If the temptation of receiving bottles full of amber intoxicants does not attract an internal examiner, the fear of being jailed certainly makes him sit up and take notice.

Whoever said girl students studying BDS are shy, polite introverts, has not met many of them. And whoever also said that proficiency in English must be a necessary pre-requisite for studying dentistry, was sadly mistaken.

After a very disappointing viva voce during an Internal Assessment examination of a girl student, a rather frustrated examiner asked her to spell tongue.

T-O-U-N-G-E.

Er... umm... what? Say that again?

T-O-U-N-G-E Sir.

Are you sure?

I am sure Sir. I am 100 per cent right. If I am wrong, I will write down the correct spelling one thousand times.

The examiner is speechless for a few moments, the six letters of the word churning over in his head.

And if you are wrong, Sir, you will have to write it down 1000 times. The examiner wakes up from the mental game of Jumble that he was playing.

Out come the textbooks, and the results are inevitable. The girl walks off out of the room in a huff.

Perhaps 15 minutes later, the examiner receives a call on his mobile phone. On the other end was the father of the student. You are mentally and physically harassing my daughter, the man says. How dare you make her write a word 1000 times? The fact that the student had herself volunteered to write the correctly spelled word a thousand times is entirely lost on the doting father. Do you know I can have you arrested for behaving like this with my daughter?

The examiner decided to send in his resignation. The father was a senior IPS officer, and there was only one direction an argument with such a person could take. Mercifully, there had been other witnesses to the entire viva voce session in that room, but one did not take chances.

The Chairman intervened. The Principal intervened. They did not want the faculty member to leave. The police officer was (not) coincidentally a close friend of the Chairman. He apologised. The matter was dropped. The faculty member took back his resignation.

Needless to say, the student passed all her university examinations in that and subsequent years in the first attempt. Otherwise, it might have been...

 

The fearless student and the fearful teacher - Part 1

It is not uncommon for a girl or boy to get married while (or even before) undertaking her / his post-graduate studies (MDS). It is such an effortless cakewalk, these post-graduate studies, that they can easily take on the added responsibility of raising a family. Husbands of girl students are sometimes keenly protective of their wives, and take proactive measures to ensure that they pass at one attempt.

One such husband decided to take matters a little further than others. He offered the internal examiner a bottle of whisky. Unfortunately, the examiner declined to accept the 'gift'. To have his whisky and drink it too, the husband decided to report the matter to the Principal. In his own way.

The professor asked for a bottle of whisky as a favour for my wife to pass her examination. Since I refused to oblige, he is now threatening to fail her. Please look into this. 

The student passed. It is another matter that the professor held back the results for quite a while, until an apology letter was finally written and submitted to him by the student. In the absence of such a letter, the professor stood to lose his reputation - if he passed her, he would have been accused of accepting the whisky. If he failed her, the accusation would have been of vengeful behaviour for not receiving his tipple.

Being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea is often a professional hazard of working as a teaching faculty in dentistry.

Of timid examiners and emboldened examinees

Somewhere in the northern part of India. A university examination for BDS final year, some 17 years ago. At a dental college that then operated out of a four-storey residential building and some tin sheds. No rules existed in those days about minimum requirements of land and building, equipment, number of faculty or patient quotas.

The external examiner was an honest, upright gentleman. The owner of the college - the Chairman, as most owners of private colleges are usually referred to - was not. At the end of the examinations, the external examiner filled up the awards list, signed, sealed and submitted it to the college, to be forwarded to the university. The owner invited the external examiner to his room for a cup of tea.

Along with his tea and an elaborate side of samosas, pakodas, sandwiches and biscuits, the frail-looking partly bald examiner was served a few sheets of paper - a duplicate set of blank awards list sheets. Please sign this. 

The righteous professor was indignant. He practically threw an apoplectic fit. The beady-eyed Chairman expressionlessly heard him out till he had finished. Then he quietly pulled out an automatic from below his table, ceremoniously placed it in front of him, and softly repeated, "Please sign this."

In the last so many years, external examiners have generally made it a practice to hand over signed blank awards lists to the internal examiner. And internal examiners are far more timid and malleable than external examiners.

So the examinee knows that the marks she / he receives in the university examinations are entirely in the hands of the internal examiner(s). So how does the student directly pressurize the internal examiner, without waiting for the Chairmen to come into the picture?

Simple. Read on.

Faking record-breaking records

Academics in any dental / medical college go hand-in-hand with treatment of patients. Students are required to 'try out' their newly acquired theoretical knowledge by working on real human beings!

Some years ago, dental colleges received a new order - that there must be plenty of 'clinical material' for every department. Only then would students be able to learn dentistry properly. A noble thought, that. However, a wildly inflated number of patients was required to fulfil the daily quota - and most colleges were unable to attract that many patients in a week, leave alone a day.

पानी मिलाना, or adding some fake records to boost up the numbers, became the norm. Then it became a game for the inspectors to verify these records at random, and catch out discrepancies. How a departmental record of a patient did not match with the main register. How the amount of dental materials given out by the store did not match the amount of work done. How cash collection records for a given day did not match the number of patients or work done. How the treating dentist seemed to be absent on that particular day, yet signed the work.

Until one day. The wizards stepped in. The experts in creating foolproof, inspector-proof, undetectably fake records. So good were they in their teamwork, in creating records without loopholes on a daily basis, that their worth shot up in the eye of the managements. They loved these wizards. Who wants real patients, eh? Some institutions loved the way these experts made up for the shortfall in numbers. And then some colleges followed the bright path of faking entire records - with practically zero real patients.

One inspector from a government college once confided: I know your records are all fake, but all data and documents are there on record, so I cannot report that anything is wrong here. But we also handle a similar number of real patients, and we know that those registers don't remain so clean and shiny when they are used every day. 


“People cheat when they are afraid. When there is no cost to being wrong or confessing ignorance, there is no reason to cheat or fake comprehension.”
~ Leah Hager Cohen, I Don't Know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance

Wisdom, honesty and expertise don't get you to the top in the world of dental education. Faking it does!

'Pass' on the threats

Any teaching institution needs one major ingredient to continue to exist - students. Paying students.

Yet, in the past few years, finding students to fill all the seats has become a challenge for any dental college. 

There are too many dental colleges across the country, and too few people aspiring to become dentists. Students and their parents from the big cities around India do not exactly queue up for admission to dental colleges. There are many more career choices than dentistry, and far more lucrative careers too. 

But those seats MUST be filled. It is a fight for existence. All's fair in war - and never mind anyone's love for the profession. Every single casual enquiry must be aggressively pursued and roped in to sign up as a student. Each institution employs agents to scour for and source students from the furthest corners of the country. But why would anyone be interested to spend a few lakhs of rupees to educate their child in dentistry and take up a career that already appears to be overcrowded? Unless, of course, there is an interesting freebie on offer?

That freebie is not a discount. It's not a new laptop. It's not even free hostel accommodation. It's just a promise.

भर्ती  करना  और पैसा देना आपका काम है। पास कराना हमारा काम है। 

Your commitment is to pay the fees we ask for, and enrol your child in our institute. Our commitment is that (s)he will pass the examinations.

The faculty is never privy to such information in advance, of course. Realization dawns when the final marksheet has its marks changed, before being sent to the University. Lately, the faculty knows. They do not try to forcefully insist upon fair assessment and results. Let the student pass as the management desires, and the faculty member gets a pat on the head, one doggie biscuit for his efforts, and a chance to stick around and draw a salary for some more time.

Of course, there are some exceptionally strong-headed, unreasonable, pretentiously righteous members of the faculty, who ignore the warning signs and covert or overt threats. They see clear reason after a short meeting with baseball-bat-and-hockey-stick-wielding persuaders, followed by a period of deep introspection along with admiration for the newly installed extra-large jewellery on their arm.

Threaten, and ye shall pass;

 Step over my broken bones into the next class.

The shrinking dental teaching job market - and falling salaries

Your services are no longer required by this institution. We found an alternative employee who accepts a significantly lower salary for working longer hours (or pretending to, which is also acceptable), and we don't care a sh!t about how well you teach or how dedicated you are to the institution.

No, notices terminating one's services with a dental college are not exactly worded that way. But behind every faculty member who is unceremoniously sacked, the thought process is the same.

Times were, when a faculty member who was willing to work full time and devote her / his energy and effort towards the betterment of the department and the dental college, was difficult to come by. And colleges cherished and held on to such people. Salaries were adequate (but certainly nowhere near corporate-head-honcho levels), and people willingly put in their 100%. It was also imperative for dental colleges to prove during inspections that their faculty members actually worked full time.

Then came another era - one where any institution can get away without needing to prove that faculty members do, indeed, work full time. Along with that came a flood of potentially qualified teachers, who were desperately seeking employment - irrespective of the salary level. They willingly lend their names to the institution and appear for inspections, to fulfil the institution's need to complete the numbers game. In return, these missing-for-the-rest-of-the year faculty members stand to gain experience of having worked as a teacher, and are on their way to time bound promotions. 4 years to jump from Senior Lecturer to Reader. Another 5 years to become a full Professor. 3 more years, and they can become post-graduate teachers. All without actually being inside their departments for any more than 2 weeks in a year!

Every time a faculty member is due for promotion (and, hopefully, a consequent salary hike), her / his services are no longer required by the institution. If it is a Senior Lecturer wanting to become a Reader - hey, we already have enough Readers! We'll just find another Senior Lecturer who accepts a lesser salary than yours! At other times, when the already present Readers in the department prove to be more expensive than the new one, they are asked to leave. Unceremoniously!

All this is but natural. Nature abhors vacuum - but nature does not mind replacing wheat with chaff.

Too late - or not?

4 months. F-O-U-R long months. And a free week or two added on.

That's how long a dental college identified on Google Maps as one tiny speck towards the northern part of India, staunchly refuses to pay salaries to its faculty.

Yet, no one protests. No one refuses to come to work. No one stops doing what they are supposed to do in exchange for their salary.

Divided we stand. United we fall. The fear of not finding another job, another college to join - that, understandably, is what terrifies most of the faculty in most dental colleges in India. As also in this aforementioned dental college. Where a word of protest from even one member of the faculty would entail replacement of the said faculty member with another, more submissive and pliant, person. At a lesser salary too.

Win-win situation for the college. For the management. And the Principal. The puppet Principal, who needs to retain that seat of power, knowing well that replacement puppet candidates for the Principal's post are equally easily available. So it is necessary to tell the faculty to forget about that unpaid salary, and harshly ask them to get back to work!

Talking of work... what work? The students in this college, like in many others, are more interested in securing their degrees at the end of the prescribed number of years of faux study. Knowledge does not matter. Skill does not matter either.

Entertainment matters. Keep the students happy. Keep them entertained. Let them play. Games. All kinds of games. Physical games. Mind games.

Concentrating on studies and the pressure of examinations causes mental depression. Suicidal tendencies.

College managements cannot take that risk. The risk of concerned parents of depressed & oppressed students pointing fingers at them, blaming them for their children's woes. That is too much of a risk.

All play and no work, and a street-smart dentist becomes Jack.

There is a flood of 'qualified' unskilled dentists and dental specialists floating around everywhere in this country, applying to dental colleges and desperately looking for work. Any kind of work. At any salary. Even without a salary. Without protest.

There may still be time to make amends. Or maybe not. Is it too late - or not?