Three new univs to become crime centres like others
The three new universities to which the University Grants Commission gave permission Tuesday to start academic activities from the next year will no doubt become places of crime centres under the present trend prevailing on the public university campuses. Therefore, we do not have much to rejoice over the start of academic activities in these three new universities which are namely, Kurigram Agricultural University, Sunamganj Science and Technology University and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University, Pirojpur.
Over the past few years, the concerned authorities are being seriously criticized for poor performance of the country’s public universities in the global ranking of universities. Despite the fact that the goal should not be for improving positions of Bangladesh universities in the rankings and the goal should be to improve or bring back the original purpose of founding the universities, these rankings reflect, to a great extent, the standards of the universities as a whole. If imparting education to students and creating new knowledge through research activities, the two major goals of a university, does not occur, Bangladesh’s universities will not find better places in the global ranking.
For about decades, Bangladesh’s universities have not been doing well compared to the universities of India and Pakistan. True, it was shocking that while education standard in these two countries is going upward, in Bangladesh it is falling down. The UGC and authorities of individual universities must find out what precisely is holding back Bangladesh’s universities to produce qualified graduates and why university teachers do not engage themselves in research activities. The rampant politcisation of the campuses and corruption are mostly responsible for the extremely foul atmosphere of education on the campuses.
In the universities, vice-chancellors are appointed on the basis of their government party allegiance, not by their academic and administrative merits. Teachers are also appointed for their political affiliations, and once appointed as teachers they engage themselves in the country’s ongoing dirty politics rather than educating students and doing research for which their salary is paid from the public coffers.
The most damaging of all is that the students are used as musclemen for politics that has made universities as veritable crime centres, not places of education. In a planned way, the environment of education has been destroyed in the country so that this nation gets crippled. Indeed, we as a nation have become so deformed today that we cannot hold our heads in high esteem because of our overall education standard.
