Politics and public universities

I was talking to one of my professors on skype, when we were discussing about various issues in the USA and especially in Bangladesh. He actually knows about Bangladesh very well and he is very interested in  education sector of Bangladesh. He knows what is going on here with our public universities and he mentioned that these universities suffer much. The word 'trauma' just popped up my mind that time,  because this is the perfect word that we can use to define our public universities. Trauma means suffering, pain, distress and these are exactly what are going on with these institutions these days.
Why are we not being able to control these pains in these institutions? Don't we know the severe consequences of these pains? Possibly our policy makers and administrators do not care about these issues and no matter what happens, they just keep silence  and let the things crop up that destroys these universities. There are some of the public universities often being closed for indefinite time. During such period, there is no environment in favour of running these institutions due to the clash between groups and this clash leads to murders, vandalism and other tensed activities that create panic among the students and as a result the authority has no option but to close the entire institution. When this sudden decision comes, students are bound to leave the campus hurriedly, this is absolutely painful and adds to the stress. And, on top of this, when these institutions are closed, students undergo  unscheduled break of studies that leads to session jam.
When our government talks about the development of our education sector, we see that our government party people are involved in clash that leads to the closure of these institutions, and no one knows when the institution will open again. All these students  then wait for their university to reopen and this is nothing but extreme painful situation sitting idle in home, when they are supposed to complete their studies.
At this point of time, I would like to draw a picture between private and public university in terms of the study time required to complete the study. No doubt that most of the public universities are perceived to be doing better than any of the private university in Bangladesh, but in reality we see different picture. The major conflicting scenario is that there is no certainty in public universities that students would complete  studies in certain period of time due to this clash, vandalism that halts the study. Due to this situation many meritorious students now even do not want to go to public universities; instead they want to go private universities.
These private universities follow the schedule very strictly and there is no way they will deviate from its original plan. Even no political clash can hamper the study. If classes cannot be taken on weekdays due to the political strike, blockade, the classes then are rescheduled on weekends and in this way these private universities complete their classes in time.
It is also conceivable that teachers of the public universities are  a little bit reluctant and they also do not  care much if these institutions are open or not. And, also many public university teachers are seen to work as an adjunct faculty in many private universities and they seem to be happy giving more time in private institutions and if these public universities are closed for long, these teachers have nothing to worry in many ways; they can get their fixed salary from their university and along with this they can spend more time to these private universities.
And, for all these, who are the worst sufferers? The sufferers are the students who cannot afford to go the private universities and  go to the various public universities. I truly do not know how our government can talk about the 'development' of  education sector leaving these students out of focus and not paying attention to make efforts to reopen these universities and making sure that these institutions run without any obstacle.
Very recently there was news in one of the major daily newspapers where it is was mentioned that Chittagong University will now publish notice in the newspaper that student politics is prohibited in this institution. Don't we think that this is funny that we need to send out notice to remind this all? And, even though this activity is prohibited, can we make sure that this would not happen?
Anyway, we all know the fact that what are going on with these universities and how students suffer, the result is that there are no normal activities in these institutions. We all need to spread our hands and need to extend cooperation so that we can have these instructions back in normal track and furthermore, we need to accept this fact that without running our public universities normally we cannot develop our country. We do hope that our government will work hard and will seek cooperation from all so that we can have a normal situation in these institutions to give the students a clash free environment in order to complete their academic life in time.

The writer is adjunct faculty at School of Business, Independent University, Bangladesh, [email protected]