Higher education: UGC report highlights the negatives
Friday, 29 January 2010
HIGHER education in Bangladesh continues to be afflicted by a large number of negatives and the overcoming of the same has become crucial to meet the developmental aspirations of the country. The negatives have been highlighted in the recently released report of the University Grants Commission (UGC). One important aspect highlighted in it is the great disparities in education opportunities. The public and private universities, in the first place, are still not adequate in number to cater fully and uniformly to the demand of the student population all over the country.
Out of the 84 public and private universities, seven public and 42 private universities are situated in the capital region. This concentration of the universities in the Dhaka region shows up that students elsewhere in the country who want access to higher education, are disadvantaged from not finding access, in the physical sense, to institutions near to their points of origin. Most of the students aspiring for such admissions in the Dhaka region would find their ambitions cut short from this factor alone.
Even in the Dhaka region, the progress of higher education is impeded by session jams. The session jams, in turn, have linkages to frequent politically induced troubles in the campuses. More unfortunate is the fact that not only students but teachers are also found to be involved in such politics though the same is detrimental to the academic environment and timely completion of courses. The lack of sincerity on the part of some teachers of the public universities, their leaving their institutions with scholarships and not returning and taking up their work, their doing work for private universities on the side depriving their main employers, all of these issues also hamper the quality of higher education. In many of the private universities, quality suffers from simply not putting in place the needed infrastructural supports or engaging the required number of properly qualified teachers. All of these issues have been detailed in the UGC report that call for addressing of the same in a time-bound and effective manner.
Several studies have found out that access even in the public universities is monopolised by the offsprings of relatively affluent or influential sections of people. The government should adopt affirmative action policies to create greater opportunities for the poor but meritorious students to get admitted in them. The very high costs of tuition and other expenditures similarly bar students from non-affluent families from entry into the private universities. These universities need to be obliged to admit a greater number of meritorious students with concessional charges and to rationalise on the whole their fees and other costs structures to facilitate admission of a greater number of students from non-affluent families.
The UGC report has stressed the enactment of the proposed private university act. This should be attempted at the earliest. While doing this, the government may take into consideration the views of the management of the private universities.
Out of the 84 public and private universities, seven public and 42 private universities are situated in the capital region. This concentration of the universities in the Dhaka region shows up that students elsewhere in the country who want access to higher education, are disadvantaged from not finding access, in the physical sense, to institutions near to their points of origin. Most of the students aspiring for such admissions in the Dhaka region would find their ambitions cut short from this factor alone.
Even in the Dhaka region, the progress of higher education is impeded by session jams. The session jams, in turn, have linkages to frequent politically induced troubles in the campuses. More unfortunate is the fact that not only students but teachers are also found to be involved in such politics though the same is detrimental to the academic environment and timely completion of courses. The lack of sincerity on the part of some teachers of the public universities, their leaving their institutions with scholarships and not returning and taking up their work, their doing work for private universities on the side depriving their main employers, all of these issues also hamper the quality of higher education. In many of the private universities, quality suffers from simply not putting in place the needed infrastructural supports or engaging the required number of properly qualified teachers. All of these issues have been detailed in the UGC report that call for addressing of the same in a time-bound and effective manner.
Several studies have found out that access even in the public universities is monopolised by the offsprings of relatively affluent or influential sections of people. The government should adopt affirmative action policies to create greater opportunities for the poor but meritorious students to get admitted in them. The very high costs of tuition and other expenditures similarly bar students from non-affluent families from entry into the private universities. These universities need to be obliged to admit a greater number of meritorious students with concessional charges and to rationalise on the whole their fees and other costs structures to facilitate admission of a greater number of students from non-affluent families.
The UGC report has stressed the enactment of the proposed private university act. This should be attempted at the earliest. While doing this, the government may take into consideration the views of the management of the private universities.