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Considering the lack of employment opportunities and surplus output of dental graduates in the health sciences sector, the Dental Council of India has decided not to grant permission to establish new dental colleges by denying fresh proposals from various institutes. The decision in this regard was taken at the general body meeting, conducted recently by the Dental Council of India. Presently, India has 309 dental colleges, which offer graduation to 26,000 students in Dental Science stream every year.

Whereas, in the year 2010, as many as 30,570 students graduated in the course and in 1970 only 8,000 dental students graduated annually. The above mentioned statistics clearly depict the increasing number of graduates. Dr Mansing Pawar, DCI member and dean of Government Dental College said that it would be a good idea to consolidate our numbers now and strengthen the existing institutes. An exception could be made for states like those in the north-east that do not have any dental college.

Namrata Dagli in her paper- Increasing Unemployment Among Indian Dental Graduates noted that mushrooming of dental colleges in the past few years in India has led to unemployment among Indian dentists. Thousands of dentists are coming out every year with very low prospects of jobs. Some estimates indicate that in 2004, India had one dentist per 10,000 people in urban areas and one dentist per 2.5 lakh people in the rural areas. However, it is also noted that there will be a surplus of more than 1 lakh dentists in India by 2020.