No university in Bangladesh found a place in a list of top 100 varsities in Asia in the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings for three years in a row. Both the public and private universities in Bangladesh have been failing to get a satisfactory place in the international university rankings at least for the last five years. No Bangladeshi university was among the top 500 institutions either around the world in the Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the Shanghai Rankings, in 2014, 2013 and 2012.The Shanghai Ranking is prepared by the Centre for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Shanghai Ranking Consultancy scrutinizes more than 1,200 universities every year to rank top 500. According to July 2013 edition of the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, which take into account the number of electronic publications on the internet, Bangladesh’s Shahjalal University of Science and Technology ranked 2,400, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology ranked 2,709, BRAC University ranked 2,712 and Dhaka University ranked 3,222 which was once known as the Oxford of the East. .In the Webometrics Ranking of Asia Pacific Universities, no Bangladeshi university ranked among the top 500. Among the top 100 South Asian universities, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology ranked 31st, BUET 42nd, BRAC University 43rd and Dhaka University 63rd.Low standard of research and publications, poor library and laboratory facilities, lack of motivation and interest among teachers and students and a highly politicized teacher recruitment process have been blamed as the main reasons for the devastating situation. Quality of education at the universities had not improved in comparison to foreign universities mainly due to lack of quality research and limited number of quality journals published by the universities. Highly politicized teachers having poor academic records and teaching performances have been also blamed for failing to come up on front line of the list. If recruitment of teachers is politicized then it will prevent the truly meritorious candidates from entering the profession – most will be discouraged from entering as they will not want to pretend to be the lackeys of powerful political lobbies and the followers of the ideology of one or the other political parties. Many best students also keep away from taking admission and often leave the country and achieve higher academic feat on foreign land. Thus mediocre teachers and students are populating most Bangladesh varsities and the results are what the ranking say about our institutions. What is moreover, noticeable is that Bangladesh varsities are den of political activism and fighting instead of creating scholars. Their doors often remained shut and classes boycotted wasting time and opportunities to achieve high academic grades. It is advisable that the universities must carry out soul searching and specially the Dhaka University must be answerable to the nation as to why it is sinking from its earlier history of pride.The shame is for the vice-chancellors and teachers that they remain busy with our selfish politics or looking for opportunities outside country and as such most of them do not have enough time to look after the quality of education they impart to their students. It is shocking that many people, including the so-called political leaders do not find Bangladesh a worth living country. With our money they are busy to arrange luxurious second homes abroad.The dedicated and qualified teachers for higher education are needed if we want to earn name and fame as a nation. We must all remember how much we are indebted to the people for what we are. We do not need too many universities only to produce under- educated degree holders unacceptable outside. Rather our emphasis should be more on job-oriented education.
