B Pharm students, however, have little time to wonder why their syllabus has been changed midway through the semester. They are much too busy performing academic acrobatics and coping with the prospect of delayed examinations and a ``diluted'' syllabus.

The newly set up health university issued a letter in mid-December 1998, altering the first year B Pharm syllabus in the 44-odd pharmacy colleges in Maharashtra and instructed them to adopt the new syllabus with immediate effect.

However, most colleges had already ploughed through more than half of the original syllabus and were loathe to changing tack mid-way.

The Pune University and the University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT), Matunga have lodged their protests with the Nashik University, saying it would work to thestudents' detriment.

The UDCT received the health university's letter on December 19, according to Prof V M Kulkarni, head of the pharmaceutical division. Adopting a new syllabus will be anything but easy, he points out; first, UDCT has already conducted even the periodic tests for the 28-odd students in the first year course, according to the syllabus of the University of Mumbai. Secondly, it would take a long time to complete the new syllabus, which would mean that exams may have to be postponed from May to September, 1999.

Prof Madhusudan Saraf, principal of Bombay College of Pharmacy, Kalina, also concurs. ``We should have been given an adequate notice before the syllabus was introduced. Now, we have to create facilities for the teaching of new subjects,'' he said, lamenting the removal of some important subjects like organic chemistry from the syllabus.

Students and teachers said the new syllabus is a diluted version of the earlier one. A second year B Pharm student at UDCT said, ``Most of thecolleges in rural areas don't have the facilities that UDCT has, so they cannot teach subjects at the same level. To cater to them, the health university has given a lower quality syllabus.''

Also, two of the subjects taught to first-year students -- organic chemistry and computer applications -- are not there in the new syllabus. ``We invested a lot in conducting practicals for these two courses, now all that has gone waste,'' stated Prof Kulkarni. Besides, a new subject, biochemistry, has been introduced in the new syllabus, for which teaching facilities do not currently exist.

Again, there is no mention of what the syllabi for the next three years will be. ``So I don't even know what I'll be studying in the next year,'' said a first-year B Pharm student. Worse still, during the admissions in July last year, there had been no mention of the health university at all, students revealed. ``We got in thinking we would be under the University of Mumbai. Otherwise, we wouldn't have joined the course at all,''one student added. Since there cannot be a comparison between the prestige attached to the University of Mumbai and the Nashik health unversity, ``we will not even get jobs anywhere,'' other students feared.

Students and teachers at UDCT sent protest letters last week to the health university's vice-chancellor, registrar and controller of examinations. They are particularly irked as UDCT is an autonomous institution and bringing it under the health university is like ``affiliating one university to another'', as one teacher put it. Also, till now, pharmacy was treated as a technology course under the guidelines of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). ``Now, all of a sudden, it has been brought under the health university,'' said a teacher.

However, academicians perceive the change in syllabus as just one in a series of problems in the takeover of courses by the Nashik university, which was set up after much controversy last year. The new university, which aims to streamline medicaleducation in the state, will now administer and run medical and paramedical courses hitherto under the jurisdiction of individual universities.

However, the move has drawn protests from students and academicians who feel the university, a pet project of state Health Minister Dr Daulatrao Aher, was not warranted in the first place. At a press conference in the city in the first week of December, senior university officials had predicted that the new university would only create chaos and difficulties in coordination. Similar problems had cropped up with medical courses as well. For instance, a notification from the health university informing medical colleges that the first semester begins from August 1, 1998, reached the colleges on October 15!

Vice-Chancellor of the health university, Dr Dayanand Dongaonkar, however, brushed off all complaints. ``All problems can be solved through discussions,'' he said, admitting that it was rather late in the day to introduce a new syllabus. He attributed the delay tothe fact that the health university itself was set up late. The committee set up to prepare the syllabus too took its time finishing its work, he added.

According to Dr Dongaonkar, some subjects had to be taken out and new ones introduced in the B Pharm course to bring in some uniformity in the syllabus throughout the state. The syllabus was worked out by a committee which had representatives of all the universities in the state, and so there was a general agreement on it, he said. However, he added, ``There were some protests from the Pune University as well and I discussed the matter with them.''

The Vice-Chancellor also does not feel that the new syllabus will affect the students or the exam schedule. As to why the syllabus for the other years have not been prepared, he says, ``There were some time constraints, so we introduced the one that we had ready. The rest will be prepared in the next few months.''