Rating privately offered higher education
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Ghulam Mohammad
THE privately run centres of higher education are, in many cases, found to be deficient in respect of quality. The inadequacies of a good number of private universities are too well known. There is no need to repeat them here. Only searching what may be done in response, is a more relevant and 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 to decide whether to take admissions to such universities or not. The rankings will be a guide to employers about the relative worth 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, after it will be set up, should aim to identify the deficient universities and tell their management to meet standards within a specified time-frame or lose their licences to operate.
The accreditation council should also examine whether so many private universities are necessary that only offer courses mainly on business administration or the humanities. If there has been an excess of such institutions, then it should recommend no further growth of them in the future and the recommendation will have to be enforced. As it is, most of the private universities that have cropped up in recent years are offering courses exclusively on business administration and the social sciences. This is because setting up universities to teach science, technology, medicine and engineering calls for much greater investments and highly qualified teachers. Many of those who are opening private universities have only profit in their minds and they take the quickest route to such profits. The obsession to set up institutions to offer courses on mainly business studies with relatively much less investment but a quick return on investment from high student enrolment, is, thus, not difficult to understand.
But this is not what the country's economy needs. No doubt, it needs more people with education and training to run businesses. But it does not need such people to the exclusion of all others specially the ones with skills in technology, science, medicine and engineering. For the country's balanced economic growth and development, human resources must be created in diverse fields and this is possible only from higher education opportunities in diverse forms. Thus, to this end, the government should set up an effective regulatory authority to oversee the operational activities of the private universities so that these cannot concentrate in one area only.
All concerned would expect proposed accreditation council to watch over the affairs of all the universities. But it will be expected to be absolutely uncompromising in relation to its monitoring and enforcement work in relation to the few specialised centres of higher learning that have opened shop including the private medical colleges. Reportedly, it is possible to get medical degrees from these colleges without actually going through practical work on anatomy courses such as dissection and operations. Similar inadequacies also reportedly exist in the other areas of the courses of such medical colleges. So far, the public medical colleges with their many imperfections, produced nonetheless doctors and medical assistants of a certain standard who could be relied on for service and safety by the people. It would be tragic and very risky if the ranks of medical practitioners in the country now get infiltrated by such less educated or poorly trained persons passing out of private medical colleges.
Higher education in Bangladesh suffers from many lapses and there are many unfulfilled needs in this sector. But above everything, it is imperative to ensure the standard of higher education and to this aspect the government must concentrate its energies. Reforming higher education, so important an area for the future of the nation, should be included in the priority list of the government for actions.
THE privately run centres of higher education are, in many cases, found to be deficient in respect of quality. The inadequacies of a good number of private universities are too well known. There is no need to repeat them here. Only searching what may be done in response, is a more relevant and 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 to decide whether to take admissions to such universities or not. The rankings will be a guide to employers about the relative worth 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, after it will be set up, should aim to identify the deficient universities and tell their management to meet standards within a specified time-frame or lose their licences to operate.
The accreditation council should also examine whether so many private universities are necessary that only offer courses mainly on business administration or the humanities. If there has been an excess of such institutions, then it should recommend no further growth of them in the future and the recommendation will have to be enforced. As it is, most of the private universities that have cropped up in recent years are offering courses exclusively on business administration and the social sciences. This is because setting up universities to teach science, technology, medicine and engineering calls for much greater investments and highly qualified teachers. Many of those who are opening private universities have only profit in their minds and they take the quickest route to such profits. The obsession to set up institutions to offer courses on mainly business studies with relatively much less investment but a quick return on investment from high student enrolment, is, thus, not difficult to understand.
But this is not what the country's economy needs. No doubt, it needs more people with education and training to run businesses. But it does not need such people to the exclusion of all others specially the ones with skills in technology, science, medicine and engineering. For the country's balanced economic growth and development, human resources must be created in diverse fields and this is possible only from higher education opportunities in diverse forms. Thus, to this end, the government should set up an effective regulatory authority to oversee the operational activities of the private universities so that these cannot concentrate in one area only.
All concerned would expect proposed accreditation council to watch over the affairs of all the universities. But it will be expected to be absolutely uncompromising in relation to its monitoring and enforcement work in relation to the few specialised centres of higher learning that have opened shop including the private medical colleges. Reportedly, it is possible to get medical degrees from these colleges without actually going through practical work on anatomy courses such as dissection and operations. Similar inadequacies also reportedly exist in the other areas of the courses of such medical colleges. So far, the public medical colleges with their many imperfections, produced nonetheless doctors and medical assistants of a certain standard who could be relied on for service and safety by the people. It would be tragic and very risky if the ranks of medical practitioners in the country now get infiltrated by such less educated or poorly trained persons passing out of private medical colleges.
Higher education in Bangladesh suffers from many lapses and there are many unfulfilled needs in this sector. But above everything, it is imperative to ensure the standard of higher education and to this aspect the government must concentrate its energies. Reforming higher education, so important an area for the future of the nation, should be included in the priority list of the government for actions.