Both public and private universities should have the same standard
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Salahuddin Ahmed
"No, I do not believe that even Dhaka university now offers good education"- this is a comment made by one of the highest GPA holders who is now studying at a private university in Bangladesh. This is certainly true that after the rise of the private universities, standard of education at public universities is getting worse. What are the differences conceivable in the education systems between public and private universities in Bangladesh? There are certain differences between these two education systems which should be eliminated in no time. It is obvious that there would be few differences between public and private universities as private universities are owned by persons or companies and public universities are run by the government. In our country the students studying at private universities get privilege to get some real life and good education. Public university students, on the other hand, do not get all the time education that is truly required to cope with demand of the present world. First of all we know about the phenomenon of 'session jam' which is still in plain sight in public universities in Bangladesh. Instead of four years of undergraduate study, one student might need more than five years to complete the undergraduate degree. There are many reasons about this longer time; slow procedures of exams and result publication and of course political instability are some of the reasons behind this. Private university students do not face such a situation so that they will feel like spending more time to complete their degree; they all finish that in time. It is evident that student politics sometimes causes problem in public university, but we do not see this politics in private universities as the administrators of these institutions realise that this 'dirty game' cannot be allowed for the obvious reasons. What are other differences between these two types of universities? We need to consider who teach at these private universities or who are actually making it better than public university. All these private universities offer lucrative salary to the public university teachers and consequently, many of these teachers now work either as guest lecturer or full time lecturer at these private institutions. It is perceptible that these teachers find it more preferable teaching at private universities because of better salary structure. Regarding the teachers of public universities, we need to close our eyes and need to think for a second what they are doing. These teachers sometimes take two years or four years leave and join private universities. What happens when they do something like this? They deprive their students at public universities to get knowledge from them and get them involved to those private institutions merely to make more money. There is no measure of control to stop this trend and seems like we utilise our education to make a big business out of it. There are thousands of students studying at various public universities who do not have money to go to the private institutions to get timely education. They are meritorious, but only because of money they would not receive proper education, which surely is not favorable for the overall development process of our country. These students had to go through stiff competition to get into these public universities and they proved to be better than most of the private university students. But we do not know how to value the intelligence of these students. People might argue, but there is no doubt that the same teachers follow different mode of teaching approaches while working in public and private universities. In private universities there are more regulations; the same teacher go into classes after twenty five minutes in the class, but when they teach at private universities, they actually enter classes before the class actually starts. It is hard to stop these teachers to get into private universities, since public universities do not have attractive package of salary. Our government needs to think hard over this matter as this situation might lead to a total disarray. There should be comprehensive salary increase of teachers in the public universities and there should be a measure of control and regulations to get into private universities. In private universities, students do have privilege to use modern computer labs to get access to modern books and journal articles, but if we go to the library of a public university, we can see the sorry scenario. We can find books in their libraries that are written twenty years back and of course computer lab facility is almost out of order in most of the public universities in Bangladesh. Do we know students from which institutions mostly get a good job in companies like GrameenPhone, City Cell, and good commercial banks? Right now we have a situation that students from the top private universities get many of the good and attractive jobs and these students get preference in most of the companies. All these companies now look for people having timely education that private university offer. For example candidates must have good grasp in English in order to get a job in good companies. Students in public universities do not have restrictions to complete their study in English, but private university does. With this only English language medium of education, students at private universities can put them ahead of many students from public universities. If we do not have timely education offered at public universities, students from these institutions will remain behind and without any doubt the situation will deteriorate soon. These are very potential students and we should not let them lose their motivation to work hard for the development of our country. In our country many potential students do not find a good place to explore their knowledge and consequently, they are moving into other countries where they get better standard of living. We need to make sure that we have exactly the same education at both public and private universities as we do not want to make any distinction between the education system as it might prove to be disastrous for us down the road. Salahuddin Ahmed is lecturer, State University of Bangladesh, E-mail: sahmed@ashland.edu
"No, I do not believe that even Dhaka university now offers good education"- this is a comment made by one of the highest GPA holders who is now studying at a private university in Bangladesh. This is certainly true that after the rise of the private universities, standard of education at public universities is getting worse. What are the differences conceivable in the education systems between public and private universities in Bangladesh? There are certain differences between these two education systems which should be eliminated in no time. It is obvious that there would be few differences between public and private universities as private universities are owned by persons or companies and public universities are run by the government. In our country the students studying at private universities get privilege to get some real life and good education. Public university students, on the other hand, do not get all the time education that is truly required to cope with demand of the present world. First of all we know about the phenomenon of 'session jam' which is still in plain sight in public universities in Bangladesh. Instead of four years of undergraduate study, one student might need more than five years to complete the undergraduate degree. There are many reasons about this longer time; slow procedures of exams and result publication and of course political instability are some of the reasons behind this. Private university students do not face such a situation so that they will feel like spending more time to complete their degree; they all finish that in time. It is evident that student politics sometimes causes problem in public university, but we do not see this politics in private universities as the administrators of these institutions realise that this 'dirty game' cannot be allowed for the obvious reasons. What are other differences between these two types of universities? We need to consider who teach at these private universities or who are actually making it better than public university. All these private universities offer lucrative salary to the public university teachers and consequently, many of these teachers now work either as guest lecturer or full time lecturer at these private institutions. It is perceptible that these teachers find it more preferable teaching at private universities because of better salary structure. Regarding the teachers of public universities, we need to close our eyes and need to think for a second what they are doing. These teachers sometimes take two years or four years leave and join private universities. What happens when they do something like this? They deprive their students at public universities to get knowledge from them and get them involved to those private institutions merely to make more money. There is no measure of control to stop this trend and seems like we utilise our education to make a big business out of it. There are thousands of students studying at various public universities who do not have money to go to the private institutions to get timely education. They are meritorious, but only because of money they would not receive proper education, which surely is not favorable for the overall development process of our country. These students had to go through stiff competition to get into these public universities and they proved to be better than most of the private university students. But we do not know how to value the intelligence of these students. People might argue, but there is no doubt that the same teachers follow different mode of teaching approaches while working in public and private universities. In private universities there are more regulations; the same teacher go into classes after twenty five minutes in the class, but when they teach at private universities, they actually enter classes before the class actually starts. It is hard to stop these teachers to get into private universities, since public universities do not have attractive package of salary. Our government needs to think hard over this matter as this situation might lead to a total disarray. There should be comprehensive salary increase of teachers in the public universities and there should be a measure of control and regulations to get into private universities. In private universities, students do have privilege to use modern computer labs to get access to modern books and journal articles, but if we go to the library of a public university, we can see the sorry scenario. We can find books in their libraries that are written twenty years back and of course computer lab facility is almost out of order in most of the public universities in Bangladesh. Do we know students from which institutions mostly get a good job in companies like GrameenPhone, City Cell, and good commercial banks? Right now we have a situation that students from the top private universities get many of the good and attractive jobs and these students get preference in most of the companies. All these companies now look for people having timely education that private university offer. For example candidates must have good grasp in English in order to get a job in good companies. Students in public universities do not have restrictions to complete their study in English, but private university does. With this only English language medium of education, students at private universities can put them ahead of many students from public universities. If we do not have timely education offered at public universities, students from these institutions will remain behind and without any doubt the situation will deteriorate soon. These are very potential students and we should not let them lose their motivation to work hard for the development of our country. In our country many potential students do not find a good place to explore their knowledge and consequently, they are moving into other countries where they get better standard of living. We need to make sure that we have exactly the same education at both public and private universities as we do not want to make any distinction between the education system as it might prove to be disastrous for us down the road. Salahuddin Ahmed is lecturer, State University of Bangladesh, E-mail: sahmed@ashland.edu