Leftist student organisations are observing a daylong strike at the Dhaka University on Tuesday by locking up the main gates of Arts and Social Sciences faculties. They called for the strike on Sunday to protest ‘exorbitant hike’ in tuition fees at the Department of Television and Film Studies, which was started in the current session under the Social Sciences Faculty. The protest was also aimed at fee hikes for studying other subjects. The university opened at 8am, but activists of Progressive Students Alliance locked the gates at the Arts and Social Science faculties. Then, they organised a rally in front of the Arts building after a few processions. Honours courses in the Department of Television and Film Studies was introduced under the Social Sciences Faculty for the first time in the 2013-2014 academic session. A student of this department is being charged Tk 137,000 as admission and other fees in the four years needed to complete the course — as against up to TK 40,000 for any similar course. Samajtantrik Chhatra Front DU unit’s President Rashed Shahriar said, “Such high fees stands against the policy of a public university. Students from lower and middle class families won’t be able to take higher study if public universities charge such high fees.” The students who recently got themselves admitted to the Television and Film Studies department were not told about the amount of money before their admission, said one of them, Arifur Reza Chayan. He told bdnews24.com: “Those from well-off families will be able to study in this department, but it won’t be possible for those whose families can’t bear it, despite qualifying for admission.” However, Vice-Chancellor (VC) AAMS Arefin Siddique told bdnews24.com: “The university took this decision after much consideration.” Asked whether it was right to have two kinds of tuition fees in the same faculty, the VC advised us to contact Prof AJM Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan, the Chairman of Department of Television and Film Studies. Bhuiyan told bdnews24.com that the courses included many practical courses, and the high fees were meant to cover those costs. “But it is less than eight percent of what is charged in private universities.” He said they had to charge such high fees from the students as the university was not prepared to subsidise. Students Union DU unit’s President Maruf Billah Tanmoy said it was not a right decision to introduce this department if the university was incapable of running it without burdening the students with high fees. He blamed the policy of the University Grants Commission (UGC) for such a situation because the UGC wants the universities to slowly become capable of running on its own revenues. The UGC Chairman, AK Azad Chowdhury, however, did not want to comment on the issue. He told bdnews24.com: “I’ll try and find out what is going on at Dhaka University. It won’t be right to comment without knowing.” The Department of Television and Film Studies was first introduced in 2012 with only the Masters programme. This year the Honours programme was introduced with 30 seats. Recently, thousands of students of Rajshahi Univeristy started protests against hiked fees and evening courses. Police tried to break up the protests and activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League also attacked the agitating students, leaving over 50 injured. After that, the authorities closed the university for indefinite time. – bdnews24.com
