Our higher education: The current picture

Higher education in Bangladesh is imparted to students at 34 state-run, 78 private and 3 international universities. Students can choose to study in chartered accountancy, engineering, technology, agriculture and medicine at a variety of universities and colleges. At the higher level, universities are regulated by the University Grants Commission. The colleges providing higher education are under the National University. Each of the medical colleges is affiliated with a public university. Universities in Bangladesh are autonomous bodies administered by statutory bodies such as Syndicate, Senate, Academic Council, etc. in accordance with provisions laid down in their respective Acts.
There are the issues of access, equity and efficiency, both internal and external, of higher education as imparted in degree colleges and universities of Bangladesh. Degree colleges that account for the lion's share of enrolment at the level of higher education suffer from inadequate infrastructural facilities (libraries and laboratories), and lack of qualified teachers. The poor pass percentage and high incidence of unemployment amongst the graduates indicate low levels of internal and external efficiency respectively.
Because of limited number of seats at public universities, and high tuition fees charged by private universities, access to university education is rather limited. Private universities with inadequate full-time faculty members depend heavily on part-time teachers drawn primarily from public universities, which adversely affect the quality of education in those universities. With a few notable exceptions, most of the private universities impart education of unsatisfactory quality, and high tuition fees charged by such institutions make them accessible only to the affluent sections in society.
Public universities, primarily dependent on limited government funding, are unable to generate additional resources by raising tuition fees due to political constraints. They are hardly in a position to improve their quality of education through greater investment in libraries and laboratories. Many democratic provisions of the University Acts not only encroach upon the 'limited teaching time' of the faculty members, but also fail to ensure accountability of the teachers, that contributes to lengthening of sessions jams, quite often accentuated by unscheduled closure of universities due to violent inter and intra-party clashes of student fronts of major political parties.
As there is hardly any linkage between public universities and employers and job market, many university graduates, produced at considerable cost to society, have to remain unemployed for a considerable period of time before they find employment --- often in areas outside their fields of study to the misuse of the country's scarce resources. Private universities, on the other hand, remain confined only to a few disciplines that have high market demand.
Political parties talk about good education, quality education, and they advise students to become good citizens in their speeches in any programme they attend. Yet, time and again they forget it and use the students as pawns in their national political chessboard. Most public universities face disruptions in the academic calendar due to unscheduled closures resulting from political agitations, some of which lead to violence with the use of firearms. As a consequence, academic activities are seriously disrupted, leading to sessions jams. However, in comparison, most of the private universities have not yet faced such problems. Over the last few years, the number of private universities as well as the students enrolled in these institutions has increased significantly.       
The current political situation in Bangladesh has adversely affected the academic environment in almost all universities - both public and private. The members of the academia and guardians are concerned about the future of the country's education. Shutdowns are being called by different political parties amid different levels of examinations. When the political parties talk about progress and prosperity of the nation, they seem to forget their commitment towards this land when it comes to the calls of shutdowns or other programmes that obstruct normal life-style and movement of the public and students.
Students bear the brunt of these agitations because they are among the most vulnerable groups affected by the political programmes including shutdowns. The violent nature of the activities that the party activists carry out to make their shutdowns successful costs lives as we have seen in the recent past.  Policymakers surely can take meaningful steps to stop these violent acts. The common people and students want to live their regular lives peacefully. Political parties can come to an agreement that none will stage programmes that put the lives of the common people and students at risk. Moreover, the quality of education at all higher levels is very poor with myriads of problems such as class size, insufficient resources, unequal access such as gender and economic disparity, students lacking in overall learning skills such as time management, organisation, work habit and transferable skills.
At the academic level, teachers use rote memorisation of text materials for students' knowledge or learning, instead of facilitating them to use brains how to think, understand, communicate, apply knowledge and solve real-life or work-place problems. There is not enough 'environmental' --- instruction- and assessment-wise --- accommodation for students having special needs. Giving slow learners extra time for homework, quiz, test and examinations may be cited here as examples. Students are not looked after, according to their individual ability, need and interest by most of the teachers at all levels of education as they are intimidated or abused emotionally and physically while they learn, instead of motivating them by differential instructions of teaching and learning for delivery of lesson plans, assessment, evaluation and reporting through any local jurisdiction curriculum guideline.
There are dropouts. The three major root causes of male dropouts among the students are (i) poverty or cost of education, (ii) earning for family, and (iii) getting busy for household work during class time. The two basic causes for female dropouts are (i) early marriage and (ii) household chores.
In general, poverty and parental unemployment with lack of education and skills needed for jobs are the root causes of high dropout rates among rural high-level learners.
We need to accept the fact that Bangladesh is still a poor country. At this stage, the government may not afford 25 per cent of its annual budget to be spent on education or 40 per cent of its annual budget every year for universal healthcare like the cases with many welfare-oriented high income countries such as Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the USA etc. But it can try to improve by curtailing unnecessary expenditures. It is very frustrating that nearly 900 professors from different universities in Bangladesh live now in Canada, the USA, the UK or in other parts of the world on lien, and they receive their salaries from here (Bangladesh). Some of them are even living in Canada, with the support of social assistance grants for being 'unemployed' or 'underemployed'.
They could make a huge difference for Bangladesh and its students by returning home, instead of receiving welfare doles abroad. Similarly, while living in Bangladesh, a good number of our public university teachers or public hospital doctors are not focusing on their paid jobs, depriving our students and patients by not executing their regular duties, in order to carry out their private institutional consultancy or other related services. Where is their social and ethical responsibility!
To improve the country's higher education system to a level of world standard, the government of Bangladesh has taken an initiative so that our graduates develop critical knowledge and skill to compete with others and succeed in the global market. With the assistance of the World Bank, Bangladesh ministry of education has undertaken a Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP) that aims at improving the quality of teaching-learning and research capabilities of higher education institutions. The University Grants Commission has established a HEQEP unit for implementation, management, monitoring and evaluation of the activities of this project.
Although one of the main objectives of the project was to improve the quality of teaching-learning and research, most of the project activities are focused on development of infrastructure such as classrooms, lab equipment and libraries. Though these are essential components for improvement of teaching-learning quality, the importance of pedagogical knowledge and training has not been adequately addressed. To understand the need better, one must go back and evaluate the process of career development of a university teacher. In Bangladesh, like in other countries, a student with genuine and politically unbiased highest grade or class needs to be recruited as a teacher to a university. The talented professors are experts in their respective fields with excellent knowledge. To bring up an effective teacher, content knowledge must be delivered through dissemination in the classroom among other students. The part of delivery of knowledge defined as pedagogy is the most important parameter in quality improvement in education.
The writer is a retired professor of Economics, BCS General Education Cadre,
email: [email protected]