Dhaka University has earned international shame but won’t give up party politics

Over the last few months, plagiarism at the country’s premier university has been a hotly debated topic in the world of academia. Two Dhaka University teachers saw their research contracts cancelled and were refused disbursement of the remaining half of grant from the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh in November last year after their final report was found plagiarised and full of errors. Instances of plagiarism comes to light when the university has stepped into 100th year of its founding. Education quality becomes compromised as politically motivated candidates get priority in place of merit in teacher recruitment and academic positions are determined based on political choice.
The two researchers — a professor of the history department, and an associate professor of the anthropology department — were chosen for the ASB grant to research the topic “Exploring local culture and its distinctive features of greater Dhaka” in Bangla in April 2017. They withdrew half of the Tk 3.50 lakh grant in advance. In February last year, when the researchers applied for the remaining 50 per cent of the fund, after submitting the research paper along with reviewers’ comments ASB termed the research report “a mess in terms of quality”, saying it was “filled with innumerable errors that display an extreme level of carelessness and lack of professionalism”. The research report neither complies with the objectives of the study nor is it based on scientific methodology. The report has been found heavily plagiarised, which is highly immoral and a gross violation of rules that call for further action. Reviewers marked “plagiarised” 48 times in the research paper that contains 210 spelling mistakes and typos, along with many incomplete sentences. Even the name of one of the researchers was misspelt.
Once known as Oxford of the east. Now its research paper in damning language the DU’s academic standard over the years fell alarmingly. It has no research guide, reference policy, and rules regarding punishment of researchers for plagiarism in case of published or unpublished work. The development of Singapore, like many other nations, started from their education. Bangladesh is to develop like Singapore through ignorance. It is disgrace that our educated people could be so selfish that government teachers are not ashamed to be political activists under politics of thieves and gundas. The reason is their selfishness.