Poor infrastructure, lack of teachers at our public universities

NEWER public universities, in and outside of Dhaka are failing to woo students for their poor performance and infrastructure. Moreover, the number of vacant seats at these universities has tripled in the last three years.

More specifically, as per University Grants Commission (UGC) sources, about 4,100 honours and post-graduation level seats were vacant in 2016-2017 session in public universities – an increase by three times from 1,615 seats vacant in 2014-15 session. And when this is the reality – the government instead of providing qualified teachers and resources in these universities – are planning to set up more universities. At least 11 more public universities are in the pipeline and of them 10 are in the outlying districts.

These are signs of poor decisions by the government’s policymakers. Academicians have also blamed hasty and unplanned opening of public universities without creating the needed infrastructure and recruiting required number of teachers. It is more than unfortunate that so many seats remain vacant at our public universities when many of our students are going abroad in order to pursuing degrees at a higher cost.

The point, however, menace of poor and short-sighted decision making has riddled the country with non-performing institutions and businesses – be it a new bank, communications mega project or a new power plant – the decision makers are rushing to materialise them – only considering their visible existences. Also most of these hasty projects and institutions not only fail to serve their respective purposes, they end up as white elephants.

Spreading higher education by establishing newer universities is needed for taking the country forward, and not for seeking cheap publicity and drum about tales of ‘ success and development’. Our politicians, bureaucrats and policy makers must realise this fact and accordingly, put focus on providing quality teachers, labs and proper infrastructures at all our public universities.