Private Universities

The current Bangladeshi government has committed itself to revitalising education at all levels. This has prompted a flurry of articles in the press, particularly The Daily Star monthly Forum.

A recent piece in Forum by Abdus Sattar Moila (September, 2009) itemises a number of problems confronting education in Bangladesh that cut across all levels;
* divisiveness;
* high drop out rates;
* deteriorating teaching standards;
* lack of opportunity for higher education;
* low pay for teachers;
* dependence of coaching centres
* commercialisation of educational institutions;
* politicisation of students and faculty;
* and so on, In other words too numerous to mention without becoming a litany of defeatism.

I would add to this list the total lack of transparency and quality control on the part of the bodies charged with oversight of education. The criticisms levelled by Moila at education in general apply equally, or more so, to bodies like the Universities Grants Commission (UGC).

I must declare that my interest is in the university sector and disclose that for two years I taught at a private university in Dhaka; something I enjoyed immensely and which gave me some insight into the tertiary education scene.

There is a tendency to demonise the private universities and over value the private university sector. People love to tell you that the University of Dhaka is/or was the Oxford of the east. It may have been but not any longer. With honorable exceptions its faculty and student body have become politically polarised and in many instances programs and faculty have become moribund. My Bangla teacher confessed to me that while they had finished their course of study it would be a year before her results would be made available because the faculty were too busy to mark the papers. One hears many other such stories - and then there are the issues of class jam (where cancelled classes are made up because of earlier closure due to political activity or some such), faculty absence from class and abysmal salaries which lead faculty to over stretch and teach in several private universities at any one time in order to earn enough to live. Despite all of these issues Dhaka University still remains the beacon, the benchmark against which the private universities are measure - and always found wanting.

There is no doubt that some of the 54 private universities located in Bangladesh (mostly in Dhaka) are little more than degree mills, with insufficient resources, inadequate faculty and little infrastructure, who happily take desperate student's money in return for a highly dubious piece of paper. At the same time there are private universities that are honorable in their intent, seeking to give studnets a good education in return for the fees they pay. Thsi confused situation requires clarification -something I will attempt in my next post.