The load that the backbone has had to take over the years is something you can easily imagine. The load, of course, has to do with the diverse, disturbing nature of the education system in this country. There are a number of layers upon which education works, or gets stymied, in Bangladesh

Syed Badrul Ahsan

Education, you will hear a very large number of people informing you at every opportunity they come by, is the backbone of the nation. They will not tell you that the backbone is in rather bad shape today, that indeed the entire corporeal body of education has been in a state of near collapse for the last so many years. But that ought not to be a matter of surprise or of shock, seeing that the symptoms have been there for all of us to see. When in recent months the University Grants Commission decided that quite a good number of the fifty-plus private universities in the country had fallen foul of the laws and so needed to be closed down, the nation came by one more instance of just how chaotic the circumstances in which education operates these days happen to be.

   You might be tempted to ask why education should have come to such a pass. If you do come forth with the question, the answer could well be that a state which has segmented education into so many diverse levels cannot but be at sea where dealing with the intellectual future of the young is concerned. Of course, when the laws relating to the operation of private universities were approved way back in 1992, the clear expectation was that these universities would open the doors to the sort of education that defines modernity for the young. Universities such as the Independent University of Bangladesh, North South, et cetera, were expected to inject a new sense of direction into the educational arena. A perceptible feeling behind the operation of such universities was that with the public universities getting increasingly bogged down by political events (read strikes and politics-related violence here), private universities offered something of an escape route for the thousands of young men and women unable to avail opportunities of a good, rounded education at the public universities.

   In the event, much of the dream that once came attached to the private universities has got frayed at the edges. There are quite a few reasons you can cite to convince yourself why private university education may not have turned out to be the panacea we were looking for. In the first place, the rapidity with which such universities have gone up in number, without the attendant paraphernalia associated with the idea of universities, has quite frustrated a very large number of Bengalis. Most of these universities work in buildings that are not their own. In effect, they are universities all right, but they cannot lay claim to any campus of their own. The exceptions are, well, exceptions. In the second place, the private universities have somehow managed to transform themselves into elitist institutions where the young from poor and middle class families have effectively been barred from entering. That of course has to do with the enormity of fees students or their guardians must cough up in order to be able to enter such universities. The public impression which has emerged out of this emphasis on high fee rates has been telling: a very large number of these universities have been informing people, in so many words, that admission is hardly a problem as long as prospective students can reassure themselves as well as the university authorities that they can carry on with the semesters they mean to go through. Finally, there is the problem of how much of effective teaching goes on at these universities. The absence of full time faculty, the predominance of part time teachers and the like have often created some rather adverse circumstances for students at these institutions.

   Load on the backbone

   It is, in the end, a question of that backbone once more. The load that the backbone has had to take over the years is something you can easily imagine. The load, of course, has to do with the diverse, disturbing nature of the education system in this country. There are a number of layers upon which education works, or gets stymied, in Bangladesh. There is the general school system, working alongside the madrasahs. Place both these systems beside the one which stresses the invaluable nature of an O Level education, managed largely by the ubiquity of English medium schools as well as tutorials all across the country. On a slightly elevated level, we have the pleasure of seeing the Higher Secondary Certificate working side by side with A Levels. We have, meanwhile, spoken of the private universities in somewhat of a relation to the public ones. The impression might now be one of the country’s going through a diversity of sorts in education, of having adopted a set of circumstances where gaining the highest peaks in academic excellence is the goal. But note that it is a mere impression. The bigger reality is that all these various modes of education, all these discrete layers of instruction have quite brought the country to a pass where education as it is meant to be has got rather blurred in terms of a clear definition of its ethos. So where do we point in order to apportion responsibility for such a difficult, if not exactly a messy, situation?

   The answer to that question will come in good time. But note, for now, that a good deal of head-scratching has been going on where madrasah education is concerned. Over a pretty long stretch of time, one has heard the endless refrain of how essential it is to modernise madrasah education. That begs the question: given the fundamentals of the madrasah system, is it truly, really possible to bring in the elements of modernisation into the system? To be sure, the setting up of a computer laboratory, an increased emphasis on the learning of English and the like may convey the idea of modernisation here. But when you reflect on the future of these young men and women, on the career prospects that they must deal with, there is not much of a positive picture that emerges before you. The fact that even foreigners (note the way in which diplomats such as those from the United States have lately been taking such keen interest in madrasahs and the training of imams in this country) have been expending quite a bit of their thoughts and time on what we can do about or with our system of religious education speaks of the dilemma we face with the system. In the sense of politics, madrasahs are a sensitive issue. There is hardly any political party or political leader willing to raise the thought of a phasing out of the system or of going for measures aimed at a streamlining it or slicing the fat out of it. Purposeful education, in that very framework of the meaning, is a matter that the madrasahs have so far been unable to develop. Which is why public concern about what such a system can actually contribute to the development of education remains. It is obvious that change, a huge tranche of it, must come into the system of religious education if a coordinated education strategy is what the nation means to forge into shape.

   Honours minus teachers

   But let not the idea of the madrasah system of education be misconstrued as being at the core of the decline which has come to characterise education in the country. The realities are somewhere else, and are of a somewhat different hue. The dichotomy which has in the last three decades come into a discussion of education in Bangladesh is nowhere more pronounced than in a juxtaposition of Bangla medium instruction with English medium teaching. A fall in the quality of teaching at the Bangla medium schools and colleges, largely outside the capital, has created an adverse situation for students and guardians alike. The problem could have been mitigated to a large extent had qualified teachers made themselves available for service at these institutions. That has not happened, for the old charm and dignity that once symbolised teaching as a profession has had a drastic climb-down in the last three decades. The outcome has been an obvious unwillingness on the part of the educated young to take to teaching as a profession. Small wonder that colleges in such places as Sirajganj have often been compelled to have honours classes in English go without teachers. As for schools in the deep interior of the country, a slow erosion has been going on where instructing the young is concerned, the basic reason being a reluctance on the part of young people to take up teaching positions in the remote areas.

   That said, you cannot but wonder at all the experimentation that has been going on where the nature of school or college-leaving examinations is the point of focus. The marking system, the nature of questions, et al, have followed a pattern that has been meandering to say the least. That has had not only students grappling with the subjects in order to be able to get a grip on them. It has also had its impact on teachers who, having become experienced over time to a particular method of teaching and conducting examinations, have suddenly found themselves unable to handle new ideas. And yet they are the only people who have remained at the centre of things in the absence of new people coming forth to handle the issues. Which brings us to that small matter of just how much of teachers’ training goes on in the country and to what extent trained teachers are in a position to utilise their training in the classroom. But, again, the question of teachers’ training is not one that can be confined to the Bangla medium schools. It is the English medium schools, or tutorials as they once were known, which have regularly been prey to the issue. There has been a fair degree of feeling that a large number of the teachers recruited to these schools often lack the expertise or aptitude so necessary for classroom teaching. At the risk of sounding judgemental, you have to take into account the reality of how ill-equipped teachers are all too often appointed to teach the young at some of these institutions.

   The English-speaking people

   By and large, though, the English medium schools have done a good, necessary job of providing alternative, somewhat modern methods of education to the young. There remains the question, however, of whether or not a uniformity of standards is being followed by these schools. The question is again broadly linked to the increasing perception that such schools have gradually, to our dismay, been mutating into some rather pernicious modes of commercial operation. The fees charged are well beyond the means of the middle class. The inclusion of such fees (and they are not entered in the books of account) as yearly charges, often fantastical in amount, has lately been raising the hackles of guardians and students alike. The parents of children in some of these schools have gone public with their complaints about the arbitrary manner in which school management often fleece them financially. If that is one aspect of the picture, there is the other one of teachers at such institutions working under a load of pressure and not being adequately compensated for it. In other words, some of the worst features of a free market economy are to be detected in some of the English medium schools in the country.

   Among these schools are some of the oldest, reputed ones.

   The problems attendant on the operation of English medium schools have time and again led the governmental authorities into ordering them to go through a proper process of registration. That is as it should be. But where the difficulty comes in is that when these schools approach the authorities for registration, they come up against a wall of corruption they cannot pull down unless they agree to financial gratification towards a section (and this we say on the basis of conversations with the principals of some of the schools) of corrupt employees in the department. And yet none of the principals of private English medium schools who have lately attended a couple of meetings called by the education authorities to discuss a streamlining of these schools saw fit to raise the issue at the meetings, probably out of a feeling that a reference to such problems could invite official wrath on them and on their institutions.

   So there we are, in a bit of a spot where educating the young in this country is concerned. There are the public universities, where a predominance of politics, thanks to the followers of the major political parties, has regularly made mincemeat of education. And if the students’ organisations have been responsible for much of the chaos we spot in the universities, there is also the patently political that has come into the teachers’ community. All those panels —- pink, blue, white —- are but a terrible reflection of the thought of how standards of teaching have gone to the back burner and in their place has come opportunism of the most offensive kind. Add to that the increasingly higher number of public university teachers leaving their organisations in search of greener pastures. When after nearly three decades of service at a public university, a teacher happily stumbles on the possibility of earning double the amount he earns from a private university, can you really ask him to stay back? The idealistic thing for such a teacher would be to remain where he is, ignore the pay package the private universities are holding out to him and go on doing what he has been doing. But how many men and women of sheer, innocent idealism can you spot these days?

   It’s the system

   On a serious note, we really cannot be happy at the way education has been sinking deeper into the pit, can we? With all these various forms or levels of education in the country, all we have managed to come up with in these years is a system that rarely, if ever, throws up scholars around us. But you can ignore that and move on to the more worrying reality of how such reckless or tenuous education leaves very large sections of the young at a serious disadvantage. Those who go through the English medium are the ones who will likely land the good jobs, assuming that they have not left the country by that time. The young men and women in the Bangla medium schools and colleges realise, almost always and rather late in the day, that their earlier failure to come to grips with English threatens to make a nightmare of their dreams of the future. And between these two strands of instruction or experience —- call it what you will —- lies the helpless young man or woman graduating from a madrasah, looking out at the universe and finding little of the encouraging out there. And do not forget, as you go ruminating on all such points of concern, that other strand of education we know as cadet colleges, all working along their own separate methodologies.

   The mind, surely, is wider than the sky. Emily Dickinson was right. But when you have minds that quite cannot take in the world or its colours around them, you wonder where or even why things could have gone so wrong. But, really, it is not so hard to locate the problem, is it now? It is the system, stupid!

Reforms, upgrade, uniformity!

The four-pronged education has given birth to wide gaps between the students educated in different systems, especially between the students of the general and the madrassah system

Middle or secondary schools shape up the education system of a nation. Primary education is important as it creates the base of the literate population. The curriculum that involves primary education requires a thorough, in-depth research as the level of education deals with the whole of the population. The tertiary or university education is specialised and is already based on research and methods in practice across the world.

   What remains the most troublesome area in any education system is the secondary and higher secondary education, imparted in middle schools and colleges in Bangladesh as it relates mainly to the use and efficacy of knowledge on local affairs and creates the base for higher education.

   The system of education in Bangladesh has four tracks: general education which imparted in middle schools is governed by the general education boards and the curriculum is set by a national textbook board; madrassah education, which up to the tertiary level is governed by a madrassah education board, which has a curriculum and textbook wing that looks after the reading and teaching materials; there is English-medium education which is offered by private educational institutions as laid out in the UK-based GCE and GCSE O- and A-level syllabuses; and there is vocational education which offers diploma courses of a technical education board.

   The four-pronged education has given birth to wide gaps between the students educated in different systems, especially between the students of the general and the madrassah system.

   Madrassahs are simply traditional Islamic schools of learning. Until the 18th century, when western education system, which gradually led to the general system of education, was introduced, such madrassahs for the Muslims, and gurukuls for the Hindus, were the only formal way of education in the mediaeval sub-continent.

   Maktabs, which impart ibtedayi education, were primary schools in the system, first formally approved by former president Ziaur Rahman in 1978, and madrassahs were seats of secondary and higher secondary education. They offered studies of Islam, and learning of Persian. Both the royalty and the commoners were educated in madrassahs. Bangladesh has madrassahs of two types: qoumi madrassahs, which are private and teach the standard dars-i-nizami prevalent in all South Asian madrassahs; and the aliya madrassahs, a new scheme of the system, which receive financial support from the government.

   The dars-i-nizami was first introduced by an Islamic scholar in Lucknow. The curriculum consists of about 20 subjects in two categories. The subjects are grammar, rhetoric, prosody, logic, philosophy, Arabic literature, dialectal theology, the life of the prophet, medicine, mathematics, polemics, Islamic law, jurisprudence, and hadith (Muhammad’s sayings) and tafsir (exegesis of the Qur’an).

   The aliya madrassahs have five levels, parallel to those of the general education system: ibtedayi, which is elementary, dakhil, secondary, alim, higher secondary, fazil, bachelor’s course, and kamil, master’s course. They teach modern subjects such as Bangla, English, science, social studies, mathematics, geography, history and others. They also teach a revised version of dars-i-nizami. They are registered with and controlled by the madrassah education board, which prescribes syllabuses and conducts examinations. But the government has approved the equivalence of only dakhil to secondary and kamil to higher secondary education. Efforts or agitation programmes for equivalence of alim to bachelor’s degree and fazil to master’s degree are under way.

   The secondary level in general education system in Bangladesh offers compulsory subjects such as Bangla, English, mathematics, and religious instruction, and social science in science group and basic science in humanities and commerce groups. There are three elective subjects in each of the groups — physics, chemistry and biology or higher mathematics in science; history, geography and economics or civics in humanities; and marketing, accounting and business management or commercial geography. There is another elective subject in all the groups. All the subjects, with two papers in English and Bangla each, account for 1100 marks.

   Dakhil offers education in four groups: general group, which teaches the Qur’an and tajweed (proper articulation of Arabic phonetic elements), hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh (Islamic law and jurisprudence) and usulul fiqh (principles of jurisprudence), Bangla, English, mathematics, history of Islam and social science; science group, which offers courses in the Qur’an and tajweed, hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh, Bangla, English, mathematics, physics and chemistry; the muzabbid group, which offers courses in the Qur’an and tajweed, hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh, English, Bangla, history of Islam, tajweed and qirat (recitation from the Qur’an); and the fourth group, hifzul qur’an, teaches the Qur’an and tajweed (oral), hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh, English, Bangla, history of Islam, tajweed (written) and hifzul qur’an (memorisation of the Qur’an).

   The first group is focused on general subjects, religious and social studies with an addition of Arabic; the second group is the first group subjects with an addition of science, physics, and chemistry. The third group is focused primarily on religious studies such as the Qur’an and hadith; the hifzul qur’an group emphasises memorisation of the Qur’an and qur’anic sciences in addition to religious studies and Arabic. All the groups offer studies in an elective subject, from a range that includes civics, higher English or Bangla, Urdu, Persian, home economics, agriculture, higher mathematics, computer science, basic trade, logic and biology.

   The course outlines in several subjects are the same in both the systems of education; the syllabuses of English and mathematics are identical. The course outlines of physics and chemistry may be different as the general education outline details the teaching scope whereas the madrassah education outline just gives out the mark distribution scheme.

   In many courses, where the subjects are the same in both the systems, the distribution of marks and the types of questions — essay-type or short answers — are different.

   A marked difference exists between the course outlines for Bangla. The general education outline features 15 poems and 15 essays; the madrassah course outline has 10 poems and 10 essays. The outlines have only three poems in common. What the titles suggest is that the syllabus of the madrassah education is more focused on teaching a version of Bangla larded with Perso-Arabic words. The titles in the general education system stand to offer a broader view on life because of a varied selection.

   All the three groups of general education have five subjects, accounting for 700 marks, in common; three subjects are focused on the group contents. In the madrassah education system, all the four groups have only two subjects in common — Bangla and English; and the curriculum layout shows that the curriculum and textbook wing of the madrassah education board has given more preference to English than Bangla after Arabic. And the students of madrassah education are obviously in a disadvantageous position because of the additional burden of learning the Arabic language; but surveys show that less meritorious students, in most cases, pursue or are made to pursue madrassah education, which results in a poor performance in public examinations.

   Although outlines of both the courses are almost the same in some cases, the madrassah education imparts half the view on life and society compared with the outline of the general education system as the general and science groups of the madrassah education have five Islamic subjects and the remaining groups are predominantly focused on Islamic instructions. But even then, such a revised curriculum for dakhil level in madrassah education has been around for few years.

   Whatever be the standards of the curriculum of the education systems, the teaching method and the quality of the people on the teaching staff remain crucial. The English course outline, which is the same in both the systems, hints at ‘communicative language teaching and learning… in the classroom.’ The course outline in its preamble also says that a syllabus cannot ensure such a provision. If this is so, then teaching in such a method is solely dependent on the training and competence of the teachers, which is almost absent in even most general educational institutions. If the situation in most middle school is bad, the situation in most madrassahs is worse, as reflected in the outcome in public examinations. This explains the poor situation of teachers’ training and quality, leading to a poorer quality education imparted on the students. Only the case in general education system is probably a bit better than the condition in madrassahs.

   Apart from teachers’ training, another factor that contributes to poor show in madrassahs is the quality of students and the group they take up. This also plays a role in creating a divide with the students of general education system. The madrassah students pursuing the groups primarily focused on Islamic instructions would, in the process of learning, distance themselves from the students taking up the courses of other groups; this means that the course outlines have more flaws in themselves than the course outlines in general education. Lack of uniformity is more pronounced in madrassah education course outlines. And all the madrassah students together distance themselves from the students of general education because of a starkly varying outlook on life and society the system tries to imbue them with.

   Madrassah education system has been updated to this level in about three decades. But uniformity with the general education system remains distant. For a uniform, secondary, education system, policies need to stress access and equity, which means the whole population should have access to education and guardians should have the ability to pay for it. Surveys show that most madrassah students are children of farmers of rural areas. People having more children usually send some of the younger to madrassahs as education in the institutions is less expensive.

   The policies also need to look into the quality of education, which might be achieved with need-based syllabus, adequacy of resources consistent with objectives, management and governance and the quality of teachers. This is a factor which has already made public university education different from that in private universities. The students in private universities, who go through a syllabus the same as followed in public universities, become more competent for job market, because of the sheer training they receive in the system, although they might not be of the similar calibre.

   The management and governance of schools should be streamlined; the perception of government role in the functioning of schools should be redefined; excessive centralisation should be removed and intrusion of partisan policies should be checked.

   The fourth factor the policies should stress is adequacy and use of resources; only increased allocation in budget will fail to yield better results; the weaknesses in the use of resources should also be addressed.

   And all this should be done along with reforms in and upgrade to the course curriculum. Secondary curriculum should focus on the contents and objectives that would be relevant to a larger portion of the population. A poem written in the 13th century Bangla or studies of poems in English with prosody, or Arabic prosody as in the madrassah curriculum, will do little good to students in their practical life. Education in madrassahs also narrows down the scope of work for the students in life as it involves knowledge of some things which are hardly required for jobs of many types.

Churning out ‘lost generations’

Out-of-the-classroom education has gradually turned into a full-blown ancillary business, if not a bigger operation than the schools teaching apparatus itself. Private teaching by the same teacher who teaches at the school, or the armada of coaching centres with ‘KG I to Degree’ make education nothing less than a money spinning machine

Mahfuz Sadique

‘Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.’ Forgive me for not being able to extract the original context of Bertrand Russell’s comment but it is so true to the topic at hand that it seems to me that the formative education given to children and teenagers at Bangladesh’s primary, secondary and higher-secondary platforms might as well have been modelled on the premise of this screwball comment. They are churning out ‘stupid’ young men and women, who are neither ready to enter today’s competitive market dynamics due to their lack of practical skills nor anywhere near the required general educational competency to pursue a deeper study of a specific subject. Even more alarming is the fact that the parade of ‘lost generations’ is growing longer and longer. And this legacy is a not a three-decade-old one, but one of more than a century.

   To start with, thirty-four years after independence, it seems, we haven’t even figured out what we want to teach our young minds, let alone how to do it. Last year, our ever vigilant educationists, came up with another — the sixth, to be precise — education commission report headed by Professor Maniruzzaman Miah. If the 1974 Qudrat-e-Khuda Education Report is to be considered the first declaration of the new nation’s vision of its tomorrow’s citizens then it was a good one. For it envisaged a restructured two-tier primary and secondary education system with a modern structure and uniform approach befitting a modern and a new nation. The Qudrat-e-Khuda Commission suggested that primary education should be of eight years (Class I to Class VIII) and secondary education will be of four years (Class IX to Class XII) and regarding curriculum, syllabus and textbooks, the commission suggested a uniform curriculum for primary level based on competence. The commission gave special emphasis on ‘improved assessment system’ and suggested letter grading in the assessment of student performance in all stages of education.

   With letter grading introduced just in the last few years in both the Secondary School Certificate and Higher Secondary Certificate Examination systems and almost every education commission report after the independence recommending a two-tier system stating that ‘there should not be separate institutions for secondary and higher secondary education as these impede quality development and management’, the lack of constructive change is appalling. Furthermore, most reports have recommended a single-track education system, instead of the current multi-track, up to the secondary level; this too has met little, or no, attention. So what happened in between these thirty years? Well, everything under the sun, and yet nothing.

   The children of Bangladesh have turned out to be dummy cases for each and every new whim the educationists could come up with. Be it the regular change in the national textbooks, not on the basis of new and improved content but more on certain ‘ideological’ issues or the ever changing examination system — more objective MCQ style and the vomiting of memorised generic notebook subjective answers.

   To begin to understand the state of a mind that goes through the process of the Bangladeshi education system, it is imperative to start from the beginning.

   Before attending government primary schools, for which the starting age is six, children in urban and semi-urban areas attend one- or two-year pre-primary education in either private schools, kindergartens for almost two years, or just informally in government primary schools for six months. Though very little attention — in terms of critical importance — is given to such forms of pre-primary education, those are the formative years in terms of the basic moulding of cognitive and analytical skills so crucial for future learning. Time and again, the need for good language skills have been emphasised. The 2004 education commission report emphasised ‘teaching of Bangla and English at the primary level’.

   One would not be incorrect in stating that the primary education system in Bangladesh is in shambles and in terms of quality lacks even the basic requirements. However, enrolment rate is probably the most positive side of the primary education system and special mention, in terms of increasing the general literacy rate is deserved by the non-formal primary education initiative undertaken by various non-government organisations. Since 1985, over 34,000 thatch-roofed schoolhouses of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee with earthen floors and simple teaching materials sprang up in villages across rural Bangladesh and nearly a million children received primary education through this initiative. With eleven types of primary schooling institutions totalling 78,126, government primary schools constitute the bulk portion of this with above 50 per cent of the total number. But almost justifying Nietzsche — Large state public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad — our public primary education system is plagued by inadequate classrooms, teachers and textbooks. The other inadequacy that disturbs many social scientists is the growing lack of playgrounds and other non-academic activities that create the proper platform for a primary level of education filled with joy. If Tagore was right when he had said, ‘An education without joy is not education at all,’ then primary education is hindering the first step to creating proactive citizens.

   The need for competent teachers is the other big issue when it comes to primary education. Like a vicious cycle, since primary school teaching has become an outcast job with uncertain and meagre pay, less and less well-trained teachers are opting for primary teaching positions. Even if we solve the infrastructure inadequacy of primary education as a stop-gap solution, the attitude towards primary education itself is an ominous sign.

   Though this is the scenario, the crux of the matter remains that expenditure for salaries constitutes the major part of the public budgetary expenditure breakdown. For starters in addition to paying the salaries of teachers of government primary schools, teachers in non-government registered schools also receive almost full salary payment from the government. Non-registered non-government schoolteachers also receive grants. While successive governments have kept one of the highest budgetary allocations for the primary education sector, the percentage of that allocation going as salaries still remains in their 1990s. But the sheer volume of students still keeps the teacher-student ratio down and expenditure on infrastructure also remains ignored. Like a double-edged sword, we are stuck with low paid primary school teachers — taking up huge budgetary allocations — imparting equally low quality education to ever growing numbers of students under appalling educational conditions.

   The sad eventuality is that a huge portion of these primary-school goers will either drop out or discontinue their studies at the secondary level.

   The secondary education system has its own separate failures on the other hand. While the textbooks for the secondary level have been massively revamped, the issue of concern still centres on skilled teachers and a lack of infrastructure.

   But the greatest hurdle facing the secondary education system of the country lies, not inside the classroom, rather outside it. It is at the secondary level that out-of-the-classroom education has gradually turned into a full-blown ancillary business, if not a bigger operation than the schools teaching apparatus itself. Private teaching by the same teacher who teaches at the school, or the armada of coaching centres with ‘KG I to Degree’ make education nothing less than a money spinning machine. And with meagre salaries, no wonder teachers are opting to teach less and less in their classrooms. And on the issue of notebooks: solutions and made-easy publications are widely available everywhere in the world, but in Bangladesh, the attitude towards these sub-standard pre-fabricated answers-for-exams halls have taken a dubious turn. They have eclipsed the education imparted in the classroom or even the main texts. It should not be a surprise to find a student in our secondary schools scampering over dozens of notebooks and not even knowing the basic content of the textbook.

   Obviously, the mainstream education in secondary institutions is not yielding results in terms of providing required foundations for a self-sustained individual in a high unemployment scenario. A solution to this could be through diverting a larger portion of the students in secondary education institutions towards technical and vocational training. During the 1990s this need was felt. With just 2 per cent of total budgetary allocation for education going to this area, the realisation did not materialise. But in recent years, especially in several policy guidelines being considered by the education ministry, the establishment of at least two vocational training colleges with the capacity of providing more in-depth technical know-how is being planned. If this plan comes through and the basic principle of education at secondary institutions is geared toward a more practical, real-world solution, the ultimate goal of creating qualified self-sustaining individuals shall be attained.

   Not sounding too idyllic, it is a nightmarish situation to find hundreds and thousands of students, literally, attending school just as a stop-gap solution, while memorising same answers for questions from notebooks and teacher’s ‘private notes’ for the sole purpose of giving that perfect answer on the exam paper. On the issue of exams, our SSC examination is probably the other factor fuelling the growth of this unhealthy education habit. Our question structure imposes the need to memorise rather than deliver analytical answers to questions based on concrete study of the subject. In the early 1990s, our education system came up with the ingenious idea of ‘objective questions’ i.e. multiple-choice questions. However, the logic that this would force students to study the original text and thus increase ‘objective’ knowledge is a farce in itself. Here is the catch: first of all, the idea that multiple-choice questions plucked out from the original text would increase the student’s objective understanding of the subject is not only flawed, but also detrimental. Just feeding information into brain would make it less competent than a processor run memory bank, while the primary premise of any education is not just to feed information but harness analytical skills to use any information – acquired in the classroom, or outside. The second, and more alarming, scenario for this type of examinations system is that it creates a massive problem of mass ‘cheating.’ Sadly, the idea of putting something on the answer sheet from any available source is not a matter of shame, rather a necessity. Parents, siblings and the plethora of ‘suppliers’ providing material for examinees (inside the exams hall) is a pitiful sight even more so in semi-urban and rural areas. Commendable, though, is the ‘crusade’ attitude taken by the government and especially, the junior minister of education in stopping mass public cheating. His helicopter rides across the country and one-man invigilation army may be the first step to stop this mass hysteria of pass-by-all-means attitude, but in reality it is the core problem which needs attention. And that is the examination system and method of teaching at our schools, or rather the lack of it.

   Those who survive (or are damaged) by the secondary education system move onto the perplexing world of higher secondary institutions or commonly known as colleges. The sheer leap that the higher secondary syllabus takes from its predecessor is huge. With an inherent systems loss within the system which wastes nearly six months, students find themselves in a quagmire of rhetorical theory and a race to know them.

   Any self-respecting educationist will tell you that it is during the higher secondary phase of education that a young mind sets forth forming an opinion on what higher education to pursue in the future, or any other course of action. Not to mention the lack of any guidance on such crucial issues, the education imparted on the teenagers of such delicate age is nothing less than sad.

   The mainstream education system — all the way from primary to the higher secondary platform — is not quite different from the attitude we have towards education, or rather what we consider important. As mentioned in the beginning, it is the legacy of makeshift solutions to our requirements for decades that is to blame.

   The nauseating replay of the same old notion that we have inherited a subservient education system from the education system from the colonial period is what I spare you from. But I ask a different question. India has inherited the same education system that we have. Look at that. India is a superpower in the ‘knowledge economy’ that has taken centre stage in today’s global information-driven dynamics. Indians may have had a two decade headstart, but their present state was not attained in one stride of a decade. A knowledge-based economy needs professionals with a solid grounding on the basic sciences, on the lingua franca of the world i.e. English and a plan (that a nation sticks to).

   The idea that a higher percentage of students passing public exams serves as a benchmark is preposterous. Producing hoards of force-fed incomplete humans with a certificate to show their competency is the last thing Bangladesh needs. Not taking much liberty on the interpretations of the many philosophies of education, this is what I have felt. Education is a state of mind that enables individuals to make choices bearing on its merits and demerits, and eventually acquire skills to fulfil that choice.

   I see a never ending procession of young minds lacking the power to choose, bereft of real world skills with an almost catastrophic lack of confidence. I just see ‘lost generations.’

Language, culture and the
need for a balance

Though many English medium students enter the world of work with dynamism, they suffer due to a lack of personal bonding with Bangla and eventually our culture. But, a little thought on the parts of the school and parents can change all that

Towheed Feroze

Scenario one: Rafin is an English medium student who has completed his ‘A’ levels and has applied to different colleges abroad. His grades are excellent, his SAT and IELTS scores enviable and his parents believe that with the right education their son is well on the right track. However, there is a small glitch: when it comes to talking in Bangla, Rafin is at a loss because his vocabulary is not extensive; the situation which apparently seemed ‘stylish’ for many of his relatives turned into utter embarrassment when Rafin was faced with the task of reading a notice in Bangla. Though, he was not perturbed by his inability to read words that he had never heard of, someone standing near him came and said, ‘You are a Bengali and you cannot read your own language for which so much blood was shed?’ Taken aback a little, he had no answer but remained silent bearing the visual resentment of the man.

   Scenario two: Ayesha was brought up in a family in Old Dhaka and still now her parents speak Bangla in the characteristic old Dhaka dialect. Realising that the future of their child lay in English medium schools, her parents got her enrolled in one of the most up-market institutions of that time and so many years later, even the most observant of linguists will have problem tracing Ayesha’s background. She hardly speaks in Bangla, her residence is in one of the affluent areas of the city and her children are more knowledgeable about events in other countries. On Pahela Baishakh, 16th December and on 26th March the children get holidays and though they vaguely know the significance of these dates, their full length importance in shaping our identity is ignored. They have been taught to speak in another language all the time and are maliciously indoctrinated with the idea that if someone speaks in Bangla then that person’s social estimation takes an irredeemable plunge.

   These two scenarios present before us offer a very disturbing phenomenon in the country and as a consequence of this, we are getting young people with global views with the right education and a sense of competition but regrettably, these ‘millennium people’ are pathetically lacking in ideas about local culture and issues. Suffice to say that, this is a process of cultural alienation that has happened over a long period of time; now, before we unite and vilify this trend we must not allow any kind of jingoistic prejudice to take over. Yes, Rafin and Ayesha have been systematically removed from what they term as the ‘core culture’ of society but their explanation to emphasise more on English is not entirely baseless. ‘See, I cannot read Bangla words because in school the stress was not on this subject and most of my subjects were in English. Therefore, if I do not know that the Bangla word for acid is ‘khar’ then is it my fault’ asks Rafin and adds, ‘yes, inability to read the language properly and not knowing many words is a drawback and I should have learnt these at home by reading Bangla books, but unfortunately, my parents never brought me any Bangla books.’

   Rafin has a point there; many parents who enrol their children at English medium schools think that they have done the ultimate thing for the education of their children and the rest will be done by the school and in this vain belief they leave the education to the school allowing a vacuum to develop. The lacuna develops and eventually the child grows up with all the right education and potential but with a certain deficiency. Time and again we have seen that when these children go abroad they find themselves in a disadvantageous position as they cannot present their culture in all its glory because even in their country they always stayed in a group isolated from the rest.

   So, are the Bangla medium students the best ambassadors of the country and what it represents? Weighing these two neutrally we cannot say that either because though the Bangla medium student is well aware of her/his society, its ethos, its lingo and its cerebral metamorphosis s/he finds himself at a critical stage looking for a job because in the career field it’s the English medium student who rules supreme.

   In the city we see hundreds of young people with ‘A’ level degrees earning a salary that would seem like a dream come true to any Bangla medium student with an M.A degree and so we are faced with a situation of contradictions; there is the Bangla medium student who is not so adept in English and thus not a competitor in the global market and on the other hand there is the English medium student, millennium savvy yet somewhat separated from his language and his culture.

   It seems that both the parties need some change that would complement their reciprocal inadequacies in ‘core’ education. For English medium students there must be more exposure to Bangla, both through language and cultural affinity and if the language is made mandatory till ‘A’ level then the English medium student won’t have to grapple with words and is likely to develop a bond with their society. Then, the student should be taught not to hold a disparaging attitude towards Bangla. In this case, we bring the issue of Ayesha, who insisted on talking in English to this writer and made a face when the answers were provided in Bangla. This segment of the social strata is desperately trying to look for the social ladder that would take them, in their opinion, to the top. They believe that speaking in Bangla brings them down to the level of the hoi polloi and thus shuns it like the plague. Obviously, their children are no different and as they maintain a sequestered existence, are gradually distanced from the language and eventually, social issues with historical relevance.

   Now, no matter how much we excoriate the English medium students, the fact is that our society’s common reaction to anyone speaking English is that of awe and respect. That person speaks English. So, he must be competent – is the general mindset of the people and when this is the case then what can the young people do other than focus on English. After all, at the end of the day they have to think of their careers.

   And in families where the millennium generation is the first one to be educated in English medium schools a tendency towards snobbery is acute. These children are given special treatment because they can use a few lines in English and as these youngsters grow up being mollycoddled for their linguistic ability they become detached from their culture believing that if they are seen speaking in Bangla or fraternizing with local issues their image will falter. Fuelled by such thoughts we see many modern day young people deliberately taking them away from their society and regrettably, the elders are not finding any fault in this either.

   Maybe it’s time that the elders realize that it would be better if we become impressed, not by a few lines of English, but by a few lines of articulately spoken Bangla as well.

   As for the Bangla medium students, well, they are close to the mother tongue and the culture but their English is nothing short of a disaster; so, the English they read as a subject must undergo a thoughtful revamp and include materials that are studied by English medium students. How ignoble their situation is becomes clear when many of these students go for IELTS coaching harbouring a desire to study abroad. They stumble to answer simple questions in English and when the do the listening module most are at a loss.

   Lastly, we come to the parents who indeed play a vital role in influencing the growth of a child. If a student is given books in both Bangla and English at home then irrespective of the medium of his education, he/she will pick both the language properly and grow up adept in English and conversant with our history and our mother tongue. But, we all know that reading is taking a beating; most parents themselves are not readers and never encourage their children to buy books. Apparently, this may not seem like an issue worth a thought but it’s this lack of reading that leads to complacence, arrogance and ignorance conditions inexorably related to little learning.

   Here, another point needs to be mentioned: English medium students may feel a little arrogant as they can communicate in another language with ease but in many cases their English is not standard either. They may talk in the language but they often lack vocabulary and creative skills. This stems from non-reading and even if they feel superior the end result is that they end up with superficial knowledge which outside the country has little value.

   People like Ayesha are all around us and they whole-heartedly believe that trying to appear as foreigners in their own country will earn them a niche spot in society but in reality they are lost in their own country. At the end of it all, we come to the matter of creating a balance between English and Bangla. If we can get that, then no section of society will be detached from either our language or our culture. On top of that, the career options will not be monopolized.

A degree, and little else

If you have been taught ‘security’ at the department of international relations, your most likely question during the examination will be to discuss the five major theories of security and the best answers will generally accompany the full names of the theorists, when they were born and when they died. Questions of security in relation to Bangladesh, or security in the modern world — these are generally absent

Mubin S Khan

Take two students of similar calibre who have just completed their Higher Secondary Certificate Examination. One chooses to sit for the entrance examinations at a local private university, say, the North South University, and is admitted to the bachelor of business administration course. The other student sits for the ‘ga’ unit examination of the commerce faculty at the University of Dhaka, and is among the first 2,000 students who have secured admission among 30,000 examinees and is admitted to the department of finance.

   Four years later, the student at the North South University has completed 126 credits and has graduated with a Cumulative Grade Point Average of somewhere between 2.5 to 3.0. The other student graduates a year later, securing a higher second class in his honours degree.

   The NSU graduate sits for an interview at a new private mobile operator and secures an entry-level job for over Tk 20,000 and the DU graduate has secured a Tk 7,000 job at a local private bank.

   In this hypothetical situation, I eliminate the premier students of the Institute of Business Administration, or say the medical and engineering students at the public universities, simply because their calibre is much higher than that of the average students at private universities, and the intellectually or economically underprivileged students who would not be able to afford the private university or the better of the public universities for any of the two reasons. I speak of a choice faced by two average students of similar economic status, who can buy into the argument of private universities and stretch their resources to avail it, or chooses to go with the premier public university, considering that in many ways public universities still have many different dimensions to offer.

   So, what went wrong here? It almost reads like a value for money equation: he who chooses to forego the expenses in higher education is made to pay in lower salaries. The arguments in favour of public universities — the heritage, diversity, the calibre of the teaching staff, the vast pool of students — seem to fall flat on its face, sitting at the interview room of big-paying companies.

   What went wrong lies in what is being taught, how it is being taught, who is teaching and who is being taught at public universities.

   Take, for example, the scenario for a student at a private university. Whatever his penchant for studying, he still must complete 40 courses, credits for each course must be earned through five to six small and big exams, presentations, report submission, tutorials, viva examinations, etc. He will have to go through three semesters in a year and will have to take three to four courses in a semester. If he does not do well in any one of them, he will have to retake them and will have to go through university at least with an average CGPA of 2.0 — anything less than that will see him fall into probation, while in some premier private universities one must graduate with a CGPA of 2.5 or more.

   For a four-year honours degree at the University of Dhaka, a student will complete around 20 courses, each course, of course, much longer in length. He will appear in three In-Course examinations, each worth ten marks, the final exam at the end of the year will be worth 70 marks and to pass, a minimum score of 33 is required. The student must have a 75 per cent attendance rate to appear for exams. However, if he fails to do so, he may still appear as a non-collegiate, paying a Tk 1,000 fee. No such privilege is accorded in private universities.

   At any examination in the Arts faculty, where I studied, an In-Course generally means three questions of which a student must answer one only and during the finals, the student must answer four questions out of a choice of eight. There are rare instances of assignments, generally awarded when teachers have failed to take the three in-course exams on time and one has been substituted in favour of an assignment; the subject is a loose choice from anything that has been taught during the year.

   The world of presentations, comprehensive reports, questionnaires, analysis, internships are completely absent from the system.

   Of course, I am taking great many liberties in my criticism, and many a teacher do not follow this norm. However, in the absence of transparency or accountability, a teacher may well get away with it.

   There are many teachers who pack up their three classes during a week into two and sometimes have a single three-hour-long class, there are some teachers who postpone the in-course examinations right till the end, taking back-to-back exams weeks before the final examinations and there are a few teachers who start their courses two months before the final examinations. Again, there are teachers who disappear in the middle of courses, remaining absent for a few months with the chair of the department sometimes taking months to find a replacement. Finally, there are others who will take classes for only 20 minutes at a time.

   And amazingly, one finds many of these same teachers teaching at private universities, and not only that, the privilege accorded to these students are such that one sometimes finds one or two private university students at Dhaka University premises who have come to use the teachers’ spare hours for some further clarification. For Dhaka University students, it is a long series of huge locks hanging from doors at all hours of the day, if the teachers are not scheduled to take any class. Any intrusion at home is not generally very welcome until you are in extremely good terms with the teacher, like working for free on the teachers’ consultancy project, and in extreme cases, where you offer to do the grocery for the teacher every week!

   And now, to the students. Each lecture is accompanied by a small photocopy of handouts which students must make numerous copies of. The preparation for the examination is done on permutation-combination basis, taking the number of topics on syllabus and pitching them against three questions. You are generally left with two options, so you take out the photocopy sheets, prepare a note, if you are among the elite students, or borrow notes from senior ‘bhais’ if you are among the average lot and memorise the answers to heart. On the exam day it is just a handwriting exercise.

   The final exams are a similar permutation-combination deal and success depends on how many worksheets you have gathered to add diversity (in the form of referring to more names) to your notes or the quality of your borrowed notes, and importantly, your relationship with the teacher.

   Invariably, the best students seem to be the ones who seem to be the stooping figures scurrying around the teacher as soon as he has left his class, following him into his office and right into all minute details of his private life.

   As for what is being taught, the syllabus on paper does not appear that bad; but when one sits down to learn, it is devoid of any practical reality. If you have been taught ‘security’ at the department of international relations, your most likely question during the examination will be to discuss the five major theories of security and the best answers will generally accompany the full names of the theorists, when they were born and when they died. Questions of security in relation to Bangladesh, or security in the modern world — these are generally absent or take minimal relevance and come in the form of rare enthusiastic discussions from a teacher who wants to give more to his students than the allotted lot.

   The actual courses are generally too heavily inclined towards theory. One teacher at the faculty of arts pointed out that after having graduated with flying colours from the university he had realized in his first job that he did not know how to write a bibliography or a footnote. ‘I could tell you all about the sixth century and seventh century theorists. In the end I realized the only job all this information would suit me for would be that of a teacher. So, I became a teacher,’ he says.

   In fact, the best job suited for the best of students at public universities to become is a teacher or scholar. And so they mostly do that. The rest — an amazing figure of 514,000 students were enrolled in public universities in Bangladesh in 2003 — are left trailing their scholarly classmates, limited in knowledge, ability, practical skills, interpersonal skills, language, limited by their knowledge in a narrow range of issues and very little knowledge of what goes around in the world and of how things are done.

   The flipside of the story is known to us all. Too many students, too few teachers, a poor salary structure for the teachers and a corrupt administration that adds to the woes of teachers and students. However, leaving policy to whoever best understands it, we can safely say from down here that whatever they are thinking is not quite working.

   The 1972-73 Dhaka Universities Act leaves very little room for the accountability of teachers. There are very few grounds on which a teacher can be dismissed from his position and that too is riddled with complications. The Act was done at a time when glorious names emerged from the Dhaka University quarters; that does not happen anymore, and may be it is time to rethink the laws.

   The issue of the salary structure is certainly credible. However, there are arguments that stand against it as well. The teachers are of such calibre that they could have easily secured a highly-paid job anywhere else. They were completely aware of what they were getting into when they started. It is generally more of a futile exercise of securing the social status and using it to gain leverage in other aspects of life; and compounded with that problem we have political appointments in recent years and appointments based on favouritism. Importantly, though, the only thing asked of them is that they fulfil their job descriptions — nothing extraordinary, one must admit.

   I think that the 1,300 teachers for 40,000 students at Dhaka University do not paint a very pretty picture and on top of that students of so many varying backgrounds restrict the ability of the teachers to expand their teaching methods. On the other side, the success of private universities is heavily dependent upon their small sizes, a tight screening procedure during admissions, and a pay structure that makes the teachers of Dhaka University lick their lips. Whether we need so many students at the tertiary level is a subject of another great debate.

   One wonders though, whether within our limited resources we could get a better deal. Take for example the administration and the red tape. You need forms to apply for forms. To sit for an exam you need a signature from the provost of the hall you are attached to and the process is as follows: the provost of the hall will keep your form overnight, a signature from the registrars office will once again detain the form for another night, two signatures will be required from any two teachers who will authenticate your attendance, a bribe has to be paid to the clerk at the department office to raise your attendance percentage because he is the sole authority (of course, he has the side trade of selling notes, hooking you up with seniors and other fruitful individuals) of that area, another signature is required once again from the chairman and finally you have to make your payment at your attached bank. Of course, your paper might get lost in their hands and the responsibility of getting the papers intact is entirely up to you. The same procedure applies once your result comes out and sometimes your marks may get magically miscalculated and the correction will require additional and unaccounted-for payments.

   The library, the very place one gathers the vast expanse of his knowledge, has no visible bookshelves in sight. They are actually hidden in the restricted part guarded by officials and one must first decide on the book he wants from the computer, gather the reference number, order the book through a slip, receive it and have it photocopied from the shop in the library premises and return it. Of course, this has been done to prevent the stealing of the books, but surely something better could have been devised to prevent stealing.

   So, you finally emerge out of this place scraping through, doing some added time for session jam. What are the skills you have learned? You have mastered the art of sucking up to teachers and bribing officials, can memorise endless pages, know an endless list of names and dates and theories, feel passionately about either BNP or Awami League, cannot generate ideas on your own, cannot write or compose presentations. In fact, even if you were in the department of English, you may still fail to write a letter in correct English. On top of that, you stutter when faced with a flurry of questions not because you don’t know the answers but because that’s the best thing your teacher in university liked about you — that you never spoke back. And you don’t know what the capital of Australia is. Good luck and God Speed.

More bang for your buck, not

The phenomenal growth of public universities has meant that a limited number of competent teachers spread thin. Most of the private universities started off with teachers of the public universities either on lien or in part-time capacity. Whereas the number of teaching positions has increased exponentially, the number of available academics has not

Mir Ashfaquzzaman

The enactment of the Private University Act in 1992 marked a major breakthrough in the higher education system of Bangladesh. The act essentially put an end to the monopoly of the state-run educational institutions on higher education and facilitated addition of a new dimension to the academic landscape. In the first year of its enactment, two private universities sprouted — North South University in Dhaka and the University of Science and Technology in Chittagong. Next year there were four more. Now, 13 years on since the legislation was enacted, Bangladesh boasts as many as 53 private universities, according to the 2003 annual report of the University Grants Commission, the regulatory authority for public and private universities. The non-governmental institutions for higher education have become as pervasive a feature as fast-food joints. The mushrooming has reached such an extent that one comes across one private university or the other in almost every lane and by-lane in the capital and other major cities. One runs into a private university where he or she least expects it — on the upper floor of a commercial building or in the midst of a cluster of residential apartments. In fact, there is one multi-storey building at Mohakhali in the capital that houses academic and administrative offices of two or more private universities. The concept of a higher seat of education sprawled over acres of land has been landed a heavy blow by the notion of city campus which essentially means several rented floors of a high-rise building, invariably at the heart of either a residential or a commercial hub. The lazy stroll along the quiet roads of an idyllic campus from has been replaced by the desperate dash through speeding traffic. The academic landscape has indeed changed forever.

   The addition of private universities to the higher education matrix was inevitable, one may argue. Until 1992, eight public universities could accommodate less than 25 per cent of some 80,000 aspiring students. The affluent section of the disappointed lot would pursue higher education in the neighbouring India or in the United States on the side of the world. The rest had to be content with whatever alternatives available at home (such as a bachelor’s degree in two-year pass course that weighed, and still does, very little in the job market) or would enter the labour force without a degree. The first few private universities that came along did not offer a solution to the surplus demand for higher education. What they actually did was provide the affluent section an alternative to higher education overseas. The middle and lower-middle class found the private universities as elusive as a degree from a university overseas. Located invariably at the heart of posh neighbourhoods such as Baridhara and Banani, home to successful industrialists and expatriate families, the universities offered their degrees in exchange for astronomical tuition fees. Whereas the public universities charged at the most Tk 2,000 in tuition and other fees per annum, the cost of education at the private universities often ran into a couple of thousand US dollars. The cost has since come down significantly with more private universities coming into the fray (as many as 46 began operations between 1995 and 2003). Regrettably, the quality of education seems to have taken a nosedive as well, and one must agree that the plunge was unavoidable.

   The phenomenal growth of public universities has meant that a limited number of competent teachers spread thin. Most of the private universities started off with teachers of the public universities either on lien or in part-time capacity. Whereas the number of teaching positions has increased exponentially, the number of available academics has not. However, the UGC annual report, projects a rather rosy picture of the teacher-student ratio. In 52 private universities, the report says, there were 4,543 teachers in 2003 — 2,762 permanent and 1,781 part-time — for 46,080 students. The actual teacher-student ratio, according to the commission’s calculation, was one to nearly 14. The ratio is phenomenal if compared with that of the public universities (1:84.61 or 6,101 teachers for 10,75,866 students). However, there is a catch. Almost 40 per cent of teachers at the private universities are part-timers and work for several universities at a time. Whereas multiple assignments of part-time teachers give the teacher-student ratio a hefty look, in real terms, it is simply foolhardy to expect optimum performance from them, especially when some of them take five classes or more a day, shuttling across the city from one university to the other.

   Then again, there is no reason to believe that the teacher-student ratio some universities boast of, in their brochures and other promotional papers, is essentially based on fact. On July 17, 2003, the education ministry constituted a nine-member committee to evaluate private universities’ compliance with the University Grants Commission’s rules and regulation. The committee, formed at the instruction of the prime minister, came about amid widespread allegation of non-compliance by and poor quality of education at the private universities. The committee, headed by the commission chairman, went about the investigation at a snail’s pace, missing several deadlines on one ground or the other. Originally scheduled to submit the report on October 19, 2003, it finally handed over a 400-page document to the prime minister on October 17, 2004, two days shy of a year since the first deadline. Anyway, the findings and recommendations of the committee were explosive. It recommended immediate closure of as many as eight private universities besides one-year probation for ten and six-month probation for six to improve their standard. The universities marked for closure were found to have provided misleading information on the constitution of their faculties and the composition of their curriculum. Most of them had bloated the number of permanent and part-time teachers on their payroll and introduced courses for which they did neither have adequate teachers nor students. And, of course they had shown infuriating indifference to the development of physical and academic infrastructure.

   Interestingly, the evaluation committee, comprising a Supreme Court judge, two leading journalists, the vice-chancellor of a leading private university and a former civil servant among others, found the performance of only nine universities satisfactory. The committee ran its investigations within the parameters set by the Private University Act; in other words, sought to confirm whether the universities probed complied with the requirements detailed in the act and in the rules and regulations of the University Grants Commission. The act lays down certain fundamental requirements for private universities, the first and foremost among them is to get a sanad (certificate) from the commission. The act sets a number of conditions for acquisition of the certificate among others: the university must get prior the commission’s approval of a plan concerning its teaching programme; it must in the initial stages have no less than two faculties (mind you, faculty does not mean teacher as is understood by people related to private universities); every faculty shall have such number of pedagogically competent specialist subject teachers as the commission may approve of; it shall have a reserved fund of no less than Tk 1 crore deposited with a nationalised bank; it shall have a balanced and dense syllabus, approved by the commission. The act also spells out that a private university ‘may, after prior consent of the government…, be located at any place in Bangladesh’, provided that it ‘may initially, after prior consent of the government, be established anywhere in a provisional manner, but it shall within five years after the date of the provisional establishment be established permanently on its own ground, no less than five acres and approved by the government, and with an adequate infrastructure’.

   The evaluation committee’s investigations and subsequent recommendation for the immediate closure of eight private universities led to the judicial inquiry by a one-member commission, led by a former judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Although the judicial commission called for lenience to be shown to one of the eight universities, its findings were almost identical to those of the evaluation committee, formed by the education ministry. It commented that the curriculum of the seven other universities were not satisfactory. The university administrations failed to meet the conditions laid down at the time of their provisional establishment and also shown indifference to different rules and regulations guiding the private universities.

   Overall, the inquiry by the education ministry committee and the judicial commission pointed to an unpalatable truth: the mushrooming of the private universities has, in most cases, proved to be a nuisance rather than an effective complement to the public-sector higher education programme, which, despite a number of flaws, remains dependable till date. It is, however, not to say that the introduction of private universities in the overall higher education matrix has been a disaster. A handful of the private universities have indeed proved their worth and earned respectability at home and abroad. These institutions have redefined the climate of higher education to a great extent. Where the experimentation with the private universities seems to have failed miserably is in the area of regulating and monitoring. The government in general and the education ministry in particular appear to have plunged headlong into the affair without any thought on the consequences. The planning was inadequate and the execution was miserable. The people in power once again concentrated more on legislations and their interpretations without any thought on enforcement. As a result, the education ministry had to be spurred by widespread allegations into launching an evaluation probe into the performance of the private universities whereas one expects the existence of an institutionalised monitoring and evaluation system.

   The introduction of private universities has injected a stupendous momentum to the growth of the higher education matrix. Incidentally, the state-run higher education network has also expanded with the introduction of quite a few universities across the country. At the same time, a number of institutes of engineering and technology, and university colleges have been elevated to universities. According to the latest count of the University Grants Commission, the number of public universities now stands at 21. There are indications that seven more will be established soon. The more the universities the wider the scope is for aberrations and violations by the university administrations and the harder the job is for the government and relevant organisations to enforce rules and regulations. It is time that the government did a serious rethink about its monitoring and regulating strategy as regards the universities, especially in the private sector.

   As said before, the private universities have become a major part in the academic landscape of Bangladesh, offering degrees in subjects that are perceived as highly remunerative in Bangladesh and therefore popular with students — such as business administration, computer science, engineering and medicine. Regrettably, for want of effective monitoring and regulation, they have also engendered a climate of deception as well. The names have been quite esoteric—Asian University of Bangladesh, Shanto-Mariam University of Creative Technology, Leading University, Premier University, Pundra University of Science and Technology—and all encompassing—North South, East West, Southern, Northern, Eastern (there must be Western somewhere in a lane or by-lane in the capital or elsewhere in the country. The brochures and the promotional papers have been glitzy. The buildings that house the universities are more or less impressive with air-conditioned classrooms, computer labs, libraries, information centres and what have you.

   In short, they have all the ingredients to allure aspiring students. What is missing at most of these universities, as the evaluation committee and the judicial commission have pointed out, is a commitment to providing quality education.

   The responsibility essentially lies with the government to dispel such a climate of deception. The evaluation and the judicial inquiry have been a reasonable start; the

   ultimate objective, however, should be a well-equipped institution that will keep the universities on track and the future of the students secure.