Problem of our education

Higher education in Bangladesh takes place at 34 government, 78 private and 3 international universities. Students can choose to further their studies in chartered accountancy, engineering, technology, agriculture and medicine at a variety of universities and colleges. At the higher level, universities are regulated by the University Grants Commission. The colleges providing higher education are under the National University. Each of the medical colleges is affiliated with a public university. Universities in Bangladesh are autonomous bodies administered by statutory bodies such as Syndicate, Senate, Academic Council, etc. in accordance with provisions laid down in their respective Acts. There are some issues of access, equity and efficiency, both internal and external, of higher education as imparted in degree colleges and universities of Bangladesh. Degree colleges that account for the lion's share of enrolment at the level of higher education suffer from inadequate infra-structural facilities (libraries and laboratories), and lack of qualified teachers with satisfactory emoluments and allowances. The poor pass percentage and high incidence of unemployment amongst the graduates indicate to low levels of internal and external efficiency respectively. Because of limited number of seats in public universities, and high tuition fees charged by the private universities, access to university education is rather limited. Private universities with inadequate full time faculty members depend heavily on part-time teachers drawn primarily from public universities, which adversely affect quality of education in those universities. With a few notable exceptions, most private universities impart education of uncertain quality, and high tuition fees charged by such institutions make them accessible only to the affluent sections in the society. Public universities, primarily dependent on limited government funding shrinking in real terms, unable to generate additional resources by raising tuition fees due to political constraints, are hardly in a position to improve their quality of education through greater investment in libraries and laboratories. Many democratic provisions of the University Acts not only encroach upon the limited teaching time of the faculty members by engaging them in active politics, but also fail to ensure accountability of the teachers, that contribute to lengthening of session jams, quite often accentuated by unscheduled closures of universities due to violent inter and intra-party clashes of student fronts of major political parties. As there hardly exists any linkage between public universities on the one hand, and employers and the job market on the other, many university graduates, produced at considerable cost to the society, have to remain unemployed for a considerable period of time before they find employment often in areas outside their fields of study to the misuse of country's scarce resources. Private universities on the other hand remain confined only to a few disciplines that have high market demand. Political parties talk about good education, quality education, and they advise students to become good citizens in their speeches in any programs they attend. Yet, time and again they forget that and use the students as pawns in their national political chess board. Most public universities face disruptions in the academic calendar due to unscheduled closure resulting from political agitations, some of which lead to violence with use of firearms. As a consequence, academic activities are seriously disrupted, leading to session jams. However, in comparison most private universities have not faced such problems yet. Over the last few years number of private universities as well as the number of students enrolled in these universities have increased significantly. The current political situation in Bangladesh has adversely affected the academic environment in almost all universities - both public and private. The members of the academia and guardians are concerned about the future of country's education. Shutdowns are being called by different political parties amidst different levels of examinations. When the political parties talk about the progress and the prosperity of the nation, they seem to forget their commitment towards this land when it comes to calling of shutdowns or other programs that obstruct normal life style and movement of the public and students. Students are most affected because they are among the most vulnerable groups affected by the shutdowns. The violent nature of the activities that the protesters carry on to make their shutdowns successful costs lives as we have seen in the recent past. Policy makers surely can take meaningful steps to stop these violent acts. The common people and students want to live their regular lives peacefully. Political parties can come to an agreement that none will stage programs that puts the lives of the common people and students at risk. Moreover, the quality of education in all higher level is very poor with a number of problems such as class size, insufficient resources, unequal access such as gender and economic disparity, students lacking in soft skills and overall learning skills such as time management, organisation, work habit and transferable skills. At the academic level teachers use rote memorisation of text materials for students' knowledge or learning, instead of facilitating them to use brains how to think, understand, communicate, apply knowledge and solve real-life or work-place problems. There is not enough environmental - instruction- and assessment-wise - accommodation for students having special needs. Giving slow learners extra time for homework, quiz, test and examinations may be cited here as examples. Students are not looked after, according to their individual ability, need and interest by most of the teachers at all levels of education as they are intimidated or abused emotionally and physically to learn, instead of motivating them by differential instructions of teaching and learning for delivery of lesson plans, assessment, evaluation and reporting by any local jurisdiction curriculum guideline. There are dropouts. The three major root causes of male dropouts among the students are (i) poverty or cost of education, (ii) earning for family, and (iii) getting busy for household work during class time. The two basic causes for female dropouts are (i) early marriage and (ii) household chores. In general, poverty and parental unemployment with lack of education and skills needed for jobs are the root causes of high dropout rates among rural high level learners. We need to accept the fact that Bangladesh is yet a poor country. At this stage, the government may not afford 25 per cent of its annual budget to be spent on education or 40 per cent of its annual budget every year for universal healthcare as the case with many welfare-oriented high income countries like Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland or the USA etc. though it can try to improve by curtailing unnecessary expenditures that it usually make. It is more urgent for the nation to have well equipped educational institutions at all levels and all over the country than having our Mega-cities equipped with costly metro-rail, elevated express way, underpass, lengthy fly-over etcetera to give vent to the unnecessarily crowded fleet of imported private cars for the 5 percent of the city dwellers who are fortunate enough to, and usually do, have their wards highly educated in advanced countries around the world at the cost of scarce foreign exchange. This is a single example, but examples of misuse of national wealth are countless at the present level of development of the country. Education and health need to be given highest priority. It is also very frustrating that nearly 900 professors of different universities in Bangladesh live now in Canada, the USA, the UK or other parts of the world on lien, receiving their salaries here. Some of them are even living in Canada, with the support of social assistance grants for being unemployed or underemployed. They could make a huge difference for Bangladesh and its students by returning home, instead of receiving welfare doles abroad. Similarly, while living in Bangladesh, a good number of our public university professors or public hospital doctors are not focusing on their paid jobs, depriving our students and patients by not doing their regular duties, in order to carry out their private institutional consultancy or other related services. Where is their social and ethical responsibility! To improve the country's higher education system towards a world standard, government of Bangladesh has taken an initiative so that our graduates develop critical knowledge and skill to compete and succeed in the global market. With the assistance of World Bank, Bangladesh ministry of education has undertaken a Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP) that aims at improving the quality of teaching-learning and research capabilities of higher education institutions. The University Grant Commission established a HEQEP unit for implementation, management, monitoring and evaluation of the activities of this project. Although one of the main objectives of the project was to improve the quality of teaching-learning and research, most of the project activities are focused on development of infrastructure such as classroom, lab equipment and library. Though these are essential components for improvement of teaching-learning quality, the importance of pedagogical knowledge and training has not been adequately addressed. To understand the need better, one must go back and evaluate the process of career development of a university teacher. In Bangladesh like in other countries, a student with genuine and politically unbiased highest grade or class ranking needs to be recruited as a teacher at university instead of senate, as it happens quite often, 'voters', not 'teachers' that adversely affect the quality of university education.. The talented professors are expert in their respective field with excellent content knowledge. To become an effective teacher, content knowledge must be delivered through dissemination in the classroom among other students in the class. The part of delivery of knowledge defined as pedagogy is the most important parameter in quality improvement in education. The writer is a retired Professor of Economics, BCS General Education Cadre.