Academic activities at public universities of the country are being hampered seriously due to crisis of teacher alongside manifold problems like lack of residential and transport facilities. Apart from inadequacy of infrastructures and other logistics, teacher shortage has taken a serious turn at the public universities those have been providing higher education to thousands of meritorious students of the country.
Some 4,150 posts of teachers remain vacant in 43 public universities of the country, Education Minister tells Jatiya Sangsad on Monday. The highest 410 posts of teachers are vacant in Chittagong University, 346 posts vacant in Rajshahi University, 314 vacant in Shahjalal Science and Technology University, 310 in Islamic University in Kushtia and 303 in Dhaka University.
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We are gravely concerned over crisis of teachers as this will disproportionate in the teacher-to-student ratios at the public universities. The teachers, students and guardians have already started working hard to recover learning looses alongside keeping academic activities alive after the prolonged closure of nearly one and a half years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
University authorities must
appoint qualified and
meritorious teachers
We think the university authorities will have to add extra classroom time for the students who have lost learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the teacher crisis is crippling academic progress at public universities.
According to the 46th annual report 2019 of Bangladesh University Grants Commission, there are 297,957 students -193,358 men and 104,599 women-as well as 15,293 teachers in 40 public universities. Besides, the number of students and teachers are 3,578,157 and 231 respectively under three other universities - the National University, Open University and Islamic Arabic University. We think the government and the university authorities should take necessary steps to fill up the vacant posts in order to make academic activities smooth and student-oriented.
The incumbent government has established 20 new public technological and general universities in the country since 2009 raising the total number of public universities to 52. Besides, as many as 105 private universities are offering higher education in the country.
It has been noticed that the authorities appointed only a few lecturers and hired some senior teachers and professionals as guest teachers to keep the academic activities running. In this regard, our public universities need to fill up the vacant posts in order to continue their efforts to ensure quality higher education and create graduates with international standards.
If the higher educational institutions do not have required teachers it would not be possible for them to produce graduates who can compete in the global arena. Therefore, the university authorities must appoint qualified and meritorious teachers in order to attain good positions in different world rankings for our academic excellence as early as possible. We believe only then our fresh graduates and post graduates degree holders young people will be able to contribute to the socio-economic development and technological advancement for the betterment of the country and global community as well.
