President Abdul Hamid has urged the private universities to turn their campuses into a complete place of practising knowledge and research remaining accountable to the country and the nation.
“Private universities must be built up as the best place of practising knowledge in a true sense because a young generation enriched with education, science and ICT can only take the nation to the peak of development,” said the President while addressing the 5th convocation of Southeast University here on Saturday.
He said democracy in Bangladesh is in the firm footing now and the country is progressing fast socially and economically. Bangladesh is gradually elevating to a middle-income country from a lower-income one as it has made significant progress in all economic and social indices, he added.
President Hamid said the country’s higher education has been expanded significantly at the public and private initiatives and a large number of students are now studying in the private universities.
A good number of students had to go to foreign universities because of limited number of seats in public universities, he said, adding that but the students are not going abroad, they are now getting proper education from private universities in the country.
“I hope that the universities of the country would play a role in preparing the future generation maintaining the pace of socioeconomic development of the world,” he said.
Reminding all about the aims and objectives of establishing private universities in the country, the President asked the private universities to continue their relentless efforts to ensure the standard of education as per the directives of the Private University Act-2010.
The Education Ministry and the University Grants Commission (UGC) have been working jointly to constitute an “accreditation council” for ensuring the standard of education in public and private universities, he said.
“I think that it is a very important step in ensuring standard of higher education in the country,” the President observed.
Abdul Hamid highly appreciated Southeast University for offering students scope to study at a reasonable cost and spending a part of its earnings for welfare of the students and research purposes.
Mentioning that studying in the private universities is costly, he urged the authorities of the university to give attention to poor and meritorious students so that they are not deprived of higher education.
Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu, Chairman of Board of Trustees of the university Md Rezaul Karim and Vice-Chancellor of Southeast University Prof Dr Anwar Hossain spoke at the convocation, among others.
Governor of Bangladesh Bank (BB) Dr Atiur Rahman delivered the convocation speech.
A total of 5,292 students were given degrees in the convocation. Two students received gold medal for their outstanding academic performance.
