M M Jasim :
Businessmen are now dominating the country’s private university trustee boards, while educationists have little space to play their due role.
Consequently, the universities in the private sector virtually turned into business houses where quality education is yet to be earned, according to the regulatory body.
A survey has found that 16 of the 19-member trustee board of North South University (NSU) are businessmen.
In the case of Independent University of Bangladesh (IUB), such businessman members are 10 out of 11.
Like NSU and the IUB, the owners of private universities are businessmen. Some of them even made the universities their prime business centres.
University Grants Commission officials said at least 90 percent BoT members of the private universities are businessmen and politicians. They have no target to make the people educated but to do business. In the meantime, a good number of the universities faced closure due to many irregularities, including certificate business.
Such businessmen-dominated BoTs influence the Vice-Chancellors in the academic, administrative and other activities. That is why, the VCs cannot work independently to build world standard educated people, as some pointed out to this correspondent.
In this circumstance, educationists are deeply worried about the future of higher education at the private universities.
They also blamed the flawed Private University Act-2010 where the criterion for being scuh trustees is not defined.
Professor Emeritus Serajul Islam Choudhury told The New Nation: “Businessmen established the universities and they are doing business.”
Professor Choudhury also said that these businessmen take huge money from the funds of the universities.
Mohammed Farashuddin, former governor of Bangladesh Bank and Chairman of BoT of East West University, said, the government gives approval to the BoT. “The government should not give nod to a BoT who has no contribution to the education sector,” he added.
UGC Chairman Professor Abdul Mannan also admitted to the fact that private university BoTs are businessmen-dominated. “Such dominance hampers the efforts to achieve quality higher education. Their prime objective is to do business. Unfortunately, many of them made the universities their main business institutions,” he said.
The UGC Chief said the mentality of such BoT members has changed the philosophy of higher education.
“Who is eligible to be a member of such BoT is not clear in the Private University Act-2010. Taking advantage of the loopholes of the law, the businessmen occupied the BoTs of all private universities,” Professor Mannan said.
