Cheap courses, global recognition draw Indian medical students to Ukraine

New Delhi, Feb 28 (IANS) Every year thousands of students from India go to Ukraine for medical education. A big reason for this is the facilities and cheap medical courses offered to the students in Ukraine and the recognition given to Ukrainian universities across the world.

The cost of medical education in a private medical college in Ukraine is half as much as in India, and the process of admission is also much simpler than in India.

There are currently 14 major medical colleges in Ukraine in which more than 18,000 Indian students are pursuing MBBS and BDS courses. Out of these, about 1,000 have returned home while efforts are on to bring back the rest.

Sandeep Dhamija, director of one of the country's renowned medical coaching institutes, says that compared to the number of seats reserved for medical course in Ukraine, few locals apply. This is the reason why medical seats are easily available to foreign students and Indian students get the benefit.

Shirish Mehta, who did his MBBS from Ukraine, says that infrastructure in medical colleges of Ukraine is far better than in India, and also the cost of medical education in Ukraine is not even half of that of private colleges in India.

The cost of medical education in government colleges in India, is around Rs 3 lakh per annum for each student. On the other hand, in private medical colleges of India, this cost goes up to Rs 20 lakh and may increase to Rs 30 lakh annually.

In government medical colleges of India, where the cost of medical education for 5 years comes around Rs 15 to Rs 20 lakh, in private colleges, a student has to shell out more than Rs 80 lakh for the same. In several Indian private medical colleges, this cost goes over Rs 1 crore.

On the other hand in Ukraine, a student doing MBBS has to pay about Rs 5 lakh per year, which takes the overall cost in five years to Rs 25 lakh.

Indian educationist C.S. Kandpal says that one of the major reasons for the popularity of medical education in Ukraine is that students here do not have to take any separate examination to join these courses, whereas in India, NEET examinations are compulsory.

Lakhs of students appear in the NEET exam every year, out of which only about 40,000 get admission in government medical colleges. In such a situation, a large number of NEET qualified Indian students turn to Ukraine.

In Ukraine, NEET qualified students get admission easily and their ranking does not matter.