Public University Admission Tests: Then & Now

The Past: It's 1984. The choice of a university and a subject is that of HSC students. O & A level students almost don't exist. There are only four general universities to choose from: Dhaka (1921), Rajshahi (1953), Chittagong (1966) and Jahangirnagar (1970).  There are only two technical universities: BUET (1962) in Dhaka and Agricultural University (1961) in Mymensingh. Today's ubiquitous BBA programmes didn't exist. The alternative wasn't a private university. Private universities came later. The alternative was placement in what was then known as a Degree College. Today's Jagannath University in Dhaka was a degree college. These colleges were under Dhaka, Rajshahi and Chittagong universities. Today they're under the National University.
It was a pre-digital era. Students needed to make at least two journeys. The first journey was to buy and submit admission forms. The second was to sit for the admission test. The situation was grave for South-West Bangladesh. If you were living in what was then Khulna Division, there was no university in your division. The admission test would be a mixture of short and essay questions. There was an uncertain waiting time before results were published. Scripts were manually checked. OMR technology didn't exist in 1984. There was a marked oral exam. A viva board would test what students had learned in school and college. The admission tests would normally be held at separate times.  If a student wanted to study for example, history or physics, they had only four chances in four admission tests. Probability of not getting your desired subject and university was high because universities were few.

The Present: Today, HSC students can choose from 34 public universities and 77 private universities. However, if the objective is to study pure history or pure physics as above, you can rule out private universities where market dominated subjects are offered. You would almost never find a pure physics or a pure history department in a private university. Let's see how the game has changed in public universities three decades later.
The university placement decision is a one shot game. Once a student has decided to go to say Univ A then Univs B, C, and others where they applied have almost lost the candidate. After students get admitted somewhere and start classes, they normally don't move. How do the public universities now respond? Dhaka, Jahangirnagar and Jagannath universities compete to get the better students. They try to hold their admission tests at similar times. On paper this isn't a problem. In the calendar it can be. The admission tests at DU, JU and JnU this year was in September. This is Ashwin in the Bangla Calendar when there's a raining tendency. Students who come from long distances, especially girls, come with at least one guardian. When political unrest forces universities to reschedule their test dates, rescheduling leave from offices by the escorting guardians can become embarrassing.
Universities have grown in numbers and spatially. Students have also grown in numbers. More than one exam increases a student's chance to get the desired subject in spite of the travelling hassle, inhospitable weather and political deadlocks. A unified admission test may therefore be more risky for students. Students need to get results quickly so they can decide if they need to sit for more admission tests in more universities scattered around Bangladesh. Universities respond to this using an OMR with questions based on MCQs. Although MCQs have reduced time in publishing results, the recent experience at the Department of English at the University of Dhaka raises the question if we need to bring back short and essay questions with MCQs as backups; and also bring back the oral test.

The Future: The University of Dhaka experience is a wakeup call. It's now high time to rethink admission tests in our public universities. Our public universities are funded and sponsored by the state. We all have a moral obligation to debate and find a way that serves the twin objectives: to assess and identify the best of our HSC students and also give them and their guardians less hassle than what they go through now. What about the O & A Level students? We'll talk about them another day.

Asrar Chowdhury teaches economic theory and game theory in the classroom. Outside he listens to music and BBC Radio; follows Test Cricket; and plays the flute. He can be reached at: asrar.chowdhury@facebook.com