Both muscle politics and political activist teachers are jointly to be blamed for universities’ shameful low ranking

For about decades, Bangladesh’s universities have been faring poorly in the global rankings, unlike the universities in neighbouring India and Pakistan. True, it is shocking that while education standard in these two countries is going upward, in Bangladesh it is falling down. When each year the name of a Bangladesh university is not found in the list of the best 1000 universities in the world, the authorities here face barrages of criticism from a cross-section of people for the dwindling standard of Bangladesh’s tertiary level of education.

Understandably, the University Grants Commission (UGC), or the government for that matter, could not stomach this criticism and hence the UGC has recently given the Bangladesh Accreditation Council (BAC) the task to improve the position of Bangladeshi universities in global rankings by ensuring the quality of higher education in the country.

Under this programme, according to the BAC, universities will have to meet conditions in 63 subjects and 10 features, including academic activities, labs, campuses, teachers and students, in order to be certified by the council. The BAC will then scrutinize each department of the universities. By the plan, ‘accreditation’ and ‘confidence’ certificates from the council must be renewed after a certain period to ensure that the universities maintain standards of education.

The vice-chancellors are not appointed for their academic competence but for loyalty to party politics of the government. They have not only lost respect of general students and but also control over administration in public universities. The students of the government party ignore the authority of the vice-chancellors and do not care to obey the teachers being their party followers.

The public universities once known as the best universities in the country but they are now run by government backed crime festedb student leaders.

It is shameful for the university teachers that they have engaged themselves in the anti-education and vote stealing politics. No sensible government with thenation’s progress in mind would have tolerated such teachers without any commitment to education. We are going through a dark age of faltering education and rewarding corrupt ones.

 However, it gives us hope that the private universities have refused to accept party politics on the university campus. They insisted on clear terms that the universities are for higher education and future leadership.

It is so disgraceful that the public universities have become centres of criminal activities by the student wing of the party in government and under the protection of the government.
We need change for presenting ourselves as a civilised and educated nation.