AFTER ten years of establishment, the whole Barishal University has only a professor and no associate professor in this public university since its inception which causes hamper to quality education. The university was established following several years’ demand of the regional people but hardly contribute to enlighten the regions. Corrupt politicization and quality compromise in teachers’ recruitment have made the university stumbled at the embryonic level. The professor, also the dean of Social Science Faculty, now serves as the university’s registrar and hardly conducts classes. It is pathetic that a public university has only a professor, and nobody heed the quality education challenge. As the university’s guardian, the University Grants Commission (UGC) should develop a solution to this.
Vice-Chancellor (VC) gave an assurance to solve all the problems but the pandemic time and UGC protocol slowed new recruitment or promotion processes. Besides, there are allegations of irregularities and corruption in teacher recruitment. Allegations also ripped that many have become teachers even after passing second class in undergraduate and postgraduate levels. As a result, questions have been raised about the desired quality of education in this institution. UGC said retired professors from other universities will be appointed on a contract basis to reduce the shortage of quality teachers.
In the last 12 years, there are a good number of public universities established across the country. Still, quality education drastically reduced for politically motivated teachers’ recruitment, irregularities, politicization of research and innovation fund, and attitude. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index (HCI) 2020 stated that the next-gen Bangladeshi workers’ potential productivity drops to 46pc. Bangladesh’s index score fell to 0.46 out of 1 in 2020 from 0.48 in the HCI 2018, the first edition of the index.
On the other hand, the number of universities and students is outnumbered. On the other hand, the businesses fail to find out the nationals’ quality employees and are forced to hire foreigners, basically India, Filipinos, Sri Lankans, etc. The UGC must take action plan to pull out the universities from such status quos.
