Indiscriminate opening of honours and masters courses without ensuring quality of education and required environment at different government and non-government colleges under the National University (NU) has drastically degraded the quality of the country’s higher education.
Concerned teachers said that teachers’ lack of skill, their engaging in coaching business and excessive political involvement, admitting excess number of students, opening new subjects despite lack of qualified teachers, launching honours and masters courses without ensuring quality are the main problems at most of the colleges that dwindle educational environment as well as quality. Besides, poor infrastructure of colleges, absence of teachers, poor evaluation of answer sheet, practical, term paper and viva-voce and admitting students by taking bribe are also the reasons of lack of quality, they opined.
As a result, higher education (honours and maters) at college level has stuck only in taking examinations and verifying answer sheets. Experts have also raised question over the educational system terming it as outdated. According to different research reports, the biggest problem lies in the fact that college level honours and maters courses still employ a very old and rigid education system, where interaction is primarily one-way between student and teacher.
Teaching at these institutes mainly involves rote-learning, which induces passivity of students and does not promote or encourage critical thinking and soft-skills – all of which are essential skills in the modern job market.
According to the latest report of the Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS), there are 1121 degree colleges, 596 honours colleges and 175 masters’ colleges across the country under the National University. Of the degree colleges, some 189 are government and 932 are private.
Number of government honours and masters colleges are 243 and 125 respectively while private honours and masters colleges are 353 and 50 respectively. According to the report, in 2006, there were only 20 private honours colleges and 41 government honours colleges across the country. This reveals that NU has given approval of, on an average, 37 colleges per year after 2006.
Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni said at an event at IDEB on January 5, “We have made educated unemployed by opening indiscriminate honours course. We do not want to create educated unemployed anymore.” According to different annual reports of the University Grants Commission (UGC), poor quality graduates are being created from colleges under national universities.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Education also has asked the National University authority to stop allowing indiscriminate honours courses at different colleges. Concerned authorities said that the National University authority takes money from the college to approve an honors or masters’ course on any subject.
Nekbar Hossain, a teacher of a private colleges that has opened honours course, said, “I have doubt that any representative from national university has visited the college after opening honours course here 20 years back.” “If the National University could implement its 81-point recommendations of 2015, which had been made to improve the quality of higher education under National University, the problem can be solved a lot,” he added.
An official of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education said, “About 2,000 students were admitted to Government Debendra College in Manikganj. However, the existing infrastructure facilities can accommodate at best 500 students. The same situation was seen at honours, masters and degree level. Besides, about 800 students were admitted in masters in the political science department of the college whereas they have a maximum capacity of 100 students.”
After visiting different colleges around Dhaka, it was seen that a large number of students were admitted in different subjects of honours courses despite acute lack of infrastructure and laboratory facilities.
About the indiscriminate opening of honours course, former vice chancellor of Dhaka University Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique told Bangladesh Post, “Before introducing any honours and masters course, the concerned authorities (NU) must justify whether all types of facilities are available to run the course in that college. Besides, the teachers must take training to ensure teaching quality.”
“To ensure quality of education, there is no alternative to research in honours and masters level. We need research laboratories and teachers training institute. At the same time, we have to give importance on technical education. We need trained and qualified teachers in this regard,” he further said.
