OVER fifty private universities of entirely Bangladesh origin have sprung up in recent years . But how many out of them can be counted as truly useful academic organisations for both the standard of education and for providing diverse forms of higher education? Only about half a dozen would fulfil such a criterion with the standards of the rest falling short in varying degrees in relation to the expectation and need.
A high powered official committee formed by the immediate past elected government recommended the immediate closure of a greater number of private universities for not meeting standards in different ways. The committee also suggested that other private universities proving to be deficient in many ways, should be given a time-frame during which their management must try to pull up standards failing which they would face penalties. This course needs to be pursued.
However, it is not that the performance of all the private universities have been only disappointing. Some of them are imparting high class education. The challenge is to improve standards in the remaining ones so that these can go on being a credible alternative to students who do not find a berth in the limited number of public universities with limited seats and can complete their higher education plans with satisfaction.
The public universities are generally maintaining reasonable standards. But they face challenges from raising enough resources to go on operating smoothly to filling their ranks of absentee teachers. These problems need to be effectively addressed along side depoliticising them that would include both their teachers and the students. Furthermore, government's investments must increase to set up more public universities and specialised centres of higher learning and training to increase higher education opportunities to a much greater number of students who would not be able to meet the high costs of higher education or training in private campuses.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) recently declared as illegal the functioning of 56 institutions of higher education. Some of them are private universities of Bangladeshi origin. Most of them are the franchises or local support centres of foreign universities. It appears that the UGC acted in arbitrary fashion in relation to most of the franchises or support centres of the foreign universities. These have been functioning for a long time after satisfying their parent bodies in foreign countries and have been providing credibly well earned degrees of foreign universities to Bangladeshi students at very little costs compared to what they would need to spend if they had to study abroad. Besides, these have been imparting quality education in sharp contrast to most of the private universities of local origin. Thus, declaring the operations of these foreign universities in Bangladesh as illegal, has been a grossly unfair and imprudent step. It clearly requires a rethink in all fairness and for the students who have spent a great deal of resources from studying in them.
Jahid Hossain
Uttara, Dhaka
University education
FE Team | Published: September 17, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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