Higher education
Photo: Azizur Rahim peu / Driknews
Your daily published the news on the protest by students to stop the introduction of evening MA at the department of English of Dhaka University. The rationale behind the move, so far I know through the report, is to prevent privatisation of higher education. The protesters also alleged that this may cause their existing problems to worsen. Later, a press conference was arranged and a memo was submitted to the VC in favour of their demand. Let me first ask the protesters what they mean by privatisation of higher education, a term often used, in my opinion with no knowledge or little knowledge. Privatisation of public programmes instead of privatisation of higher education could have been their target, I guess. Again, privatisation of higher education means publicisation, for general public, of higher education. The concept is that as many people as possible should deserve higher education publicly. But is this possible in our country? Secondly, they allege that they face problems like session jams in their department and delay in results publication. Let me humbly ask them why do not they go for a protest to solve that problem? Then take the bigger picture. The internal problem they face is prevalent in most of the public universities in our country, not only in their particular department. Session jam is common. The authorities are trying to solve the problem, but they are not yet eliminated. There is dearth of the sources of quality higher education. Streamlining the public institutions with the goal of serving the nation is essential where resource utilisation rate is quite low. At the university of Dhaka some departments are doing an excellent job by providing higher education and attaining a stronger position in service and excellence. Executive MBA form IBA, EMBA from Faculty of Business Studies, Masters in Development Studies are such examples. They are enriching themselves as well as the country. I think the English department should not be an exception.
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