Disorder managements and other irregularities are the main barriers to the higher educational sector of Bangladesh , a study conducted in Rajshahi University shows. The study also says no university of Bangladesh is among top 500 universities in the world and this is due to lack of good governance along with negative challenges facing in the higher education sector.
The disarray of statutory bodies such as senate, academic council, syndicate is used to committing crimes and anomalies.
As a result, the objectives of higher education remain far away from imparting knowledge to the students, the study said.The University Grant Commission (UGC) is responsible for administering the activities of universities whereas the National University looks after all the colleges of higher education.
The other factors that affect the accountability system and the quality of education in the country include conflicting goals and actions, the absence of an effective management system leading to rampant practices of corruption, lack of qualified teachers, Bangladesh Bureau of Educational and Information Statistics (BANBEIS) said.
From the consecutive governments a number of commissions on education had been formed to ensure quality and need based education for sustainable development of Bangladesh. But it is still going on different experiments, the study said.
The Global Education Monitoring Body has observed that two types of governance problems or challenges are facing at the higher education in Bangladesh. One is internal and another is external. The internal challenges are included centre for pedagogy and statutory while the external includes unexpected one such as teachers politics like student politics, mainstream political interference and unanticipated incidents like sexual harassment and so on, the study said.
According to global body, lack of political will appears to be the main hindrance in achieving the global education goals of equitable and quality education, or more precisely, government's commitment towards the international community for protecting education as global goal.
It also suggests that the successful implementation of national development programmes depends on the effective allocation of the resources in higher education. Although the size of the total budget is expanding, the overall allocation for the education sector of Bangladesh is not increasing at the same rate.
The body also said the universities are supposed to be autonomous, the existing culture of political polarization in the whole country has a strong influence on the management of public universities. Teachers' recruitment and promotion processes are often politicized and carried out without considering merit. # Edited by Mostfa Kamal