Ranking private universities
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Higher education is not only about quantity. More important or crucial aspect is its quality. And it is in respect of this quality factor that the privately run centres of higher education are found to be seriously deficient in many cases. The inadequacies of the private universities are too well known. There is no need to repeat them here. Only suggesting what may be done in response, is a more useful exercise.
The major requirement seems to be the formation, as swiftly as possible, an accreditation council for rating privately offered higher education and the findings of the work of such a council should be made public. Such a step will accomplish several things. First of all, the students and their guardians will know about the standard of the private universities as each of them is graded in order of performance like A, B, C, D and so on.
The ranking will help them decide whether to take admissions in such universities or not. The rankings will be a guide to employers about the relative value of the certificates of private universities. More significantly, the establishment of the accreditation council and its move to rank the universities according to performance will put the pressure on their management to go all-out to improve standard to get a good ranking to be able to remain in business. Besides, such a council, once set up, should aim to identify the poorly performing universities and tell their management to meet standards within a specified time-frame or lose their licenses to operate.
Fahima Siddiqui
Uttara, Dhaka
The major requirement seems to be the formation, as swiftly as possible, an accreditation council for rating privately offered higher education and the findings of the work of such a council should be made public. Such a step will accomplish several things. First of all, the students and their guardians will know about the standard of the private universities as each of them is graded in order of performance like A, B, C, D and so on.
The ranking will help them decide whether to take admissions in such universities or not. The rankings will be a guide to employers about the relative value of the certificates of private universities. More significantly, the establishment of the accreditation council and its move to rank the universities according to performance will put the pressure on their management to go all-out to improve standard to get a good ranking to be able to remain in business. Besides, such a council, once set up, should aim to identify the poorly performing universities and tell their management to meet standards within a specified time-frame or lose their licenses to operate.
Fahima Siddiqui
Uttara, Dhaka