President M Abdul Hamid on Wednesday feared that the current trend of commercialisation of education was affecting its quality, upsetting Bangladesh’s envisaged goal of developing world-standard manpower for national progress..
“Commercialisation of education hampers its quality . . . It is also a barrier to flourish merits and we must stop it,” he said while addressing the first convocation of Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University (JKKNIU) on its campus in Trishal in Mymensingh chancellor of universities.
President Hamid said the country was eying to be a developed nation as per the ‘Vision 2021’ and the ‘Vision-2041’ for which “we have to build mass people educated and skilled by ensuring the world-standard education to continue the ongoing development trend”.
The president said universities are regarded as centres of excellence to build skilled manpower, which was a more crucial task in the current age as “the world is more competitive now”.
He said the higher education has significantly expended in both home and abroad the country’s public and private sectors “but the standard and atmosphere of education are yet to be reached at the expected level in all universities”.
Hamid said a university is a place of exercising multiple-knowledge and the authorities concerned must ensure necessary facilities for each student so that they can acquire knowledge on current affairs alongside the routine academic curriculum.
At the very outset of his speech, the President paid tribute to Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the 1971 martyrs, heroes of the language movement and other democratic mass campaigns.
The president also paid rich tribute to the memories of national poet Nazrul particularly recalling his mission for uniting the people of all religions, casts and professions across the globe.
He described Nazrul to be great humanitarian who tried to break the man-made artificial wall of differences through his writings and expected the university named after him to not only spread his creative works to newer generations but also to pave a pathway to pay real homage to the great revolutionary poet of Bengali literature in the days ahead.
About the sense of humanity of the rebel poet, the President said Nazrul was strongly vocal against imperialism, colonialism, feudalism, fanaticism, communalism and repression.
He suggested a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to be signed between Kabi Kazi Nazrul University and Kazi Nazrul University of India’s Asansol to expand the new door of education and research activities for the teachers, researchers and students.
The president said birthplaces of British playwright Shakespeare and Persian poets Hafiz and Sheikh Saadi gradually became sites of mass attraction and expected Trishal which carries the memories of Nazrul would be site of global attention as students are getting admission into the JKKNIU for higher studies while others were coming there for research pursuits and love for him.
The President said the revolutionary write-ups of Nazrul, a poet of equity and non-communal spirit, jolted the foundation of the British ruler while his poems and songs also encouraged people during the 1952 Language Movement, 1971 Liberation War and other democratic movements here.
He called upon the new graduates to follow the spirit of the national poet and enrich them being imbued with Nazrul’s works and spirit to build a happy and prosperous “Sonar Bangla”, as dreamed by Father of Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
A total of 1845 students obtained graduation degree in the first convocation of the university and 28 of them got gold medals for their outstanding academic results. Professor Emeritus Dr Rafiqul Islam spoke as the convocation speaker on the occasion.
Chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Prof Abdul Mannan and JKKNIU Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Mohit Ul Alam, among others, spoke.
