u/SpecialistDoct

Pulling this straight from the source rather than paraphrasing.

The American Dental Association, in its official Glossary of Dental Terms, defines dentistry as:

"The evaluation, diagnosis, prevention and/or treatment (nonsurgical, surgical or related procedures) of diseases, disorders and/or conditions of the oral cavity, maxillofacial area and/or the adjacent and associated structures and their impact on the human body; provided by a dentist, within the scope of his/her education, training and experience, in accordance with the ethics of the profession and applicable law."

Three things stand out in the profession's own definition: oral cavity, maxillofacial area, and adjacent and associated structures. Not teeth alone — the connected complex: jawbones, TMJ, facial spaces, the anatomy the tooth sits in.

To head off the obvious replies:

I'm not claiming equivalence with OMFS or plastic surgery. The definition itself bounds scope "within his/her education, training and experience... and applicable law" — I'm keeping that clause in on purpose, not hiding it.

I'm not saying every dentist performs every maxillofacial procedure. Individual scope is training-bound and law-bound. That's the ADA's framing, not a dodge.

The claim is narrower than either of those: the defined scope of the profession extends beyond teeth, but the everyday title ("dentist") communicates only teeth. The definition is broad; the name is narrow; the public reads the name.

Why it's more than semantics: if the title doesn't communicate the scope, the scope goes unrecognized by patients and referrers, the trained competency gets underused, and the practical opportunity — and earning ceiling — narrows to "just teeth." A naming gap becomes a career-scope gap.

Genuine question for people in the field: is there another regulated health profession where the official definition and the common title diverge this much? Is this unique to dentistry, or a broader pattern in how professions get named vs. what they're scoped to do?

For decades, India has ranked institutions by admissions, exams, infrastructure, and placements. Nobody asks the actual question: what human outcomes are colleges producing?

I filed RTI Registration No. DOHED/R/E/26/03590/3 with the Department of Higher Education, asking whether the Ministry tracks:

Students who became innovators

Graduates who created businesses and jobs

Living-wage employment within 12 months

Patents and original products created

Skill-to-salary matching

Brain retention vs migration

Women entrepreneurship

First-generation wealth creators

Employment matching qualification

Any human outcome indicator beyond exam results

Requested institution-wise, state-wise data, last 5 years.

The official reply, verbatim:

"No such information is available with this CPIO."

For all four points. Not "confidential." Not "under review." Doesn't exist.

This isn't my opinion — it's the Government of India's own Public Information Officer, under legal obligation to answer accurately under the RTI Act 2005, confirming on record that no part of the higher education bureaucracy tracks whether a degree leads to a job, an income, or a business.

We've spent decades building colleges. We've never once measured what they actually produced.

India has 1000+ universities and tens of thousands of colleges. Millions of students, years of their lives, families' life savings, taxpayer money — and per this official response, the system doesn't measure which institutions create entrepreneurs, which create employment instead of unemployment, which help poor students reach financial independence, or which retain talent instead of losing it to migration.

Exam results and enrollment numbers were never an answer to "did this degree change someone's life." They measure attendance, not outcome.

Maybe the real question isn't "which college has the highest NIRF rank" but "which college consistently produces people who improve their own lives and create value for others."

Degrees aren't outcomes. Exams aren't outcomes. Buildings aren't outcomes. Human lives are the outcome.

Genuinely asking: has anyone else tried filing similar RTIs to other ministries/UGC/AICTE? Curious if this "no such information exists" pattern repeats elsewhere.

Source: RTI Reply, Department of Higher Education, Govt of India, Registration No. DOHED/R/E/26/03590/3, dated 23/06/2026.