DHAKA University has decided to allow only the freshly passed HSC candidates to sit for admission tests from 2015 academic session. “Aspirants who fail to enroll at the university in their HSC passing year will not be eligible to apply at Dhaka University the following year,” VC Prof AAMS Arefin Siddique, commented as reported in the press. The decision came at a recent meeting of the admission committee of the University.
Thereby, students who have passed HSC in 2014 will not be eligible to sit for admission test in the coming years. The university authorities have moved for the decision in a bid to discourage coaching system and lessen the ‘unequal’ competition between the regular and irregular students, Prof Arefin opined. It was also found that most of those who had been detained for fraudulence in the admission tests were second-time admission seekers, said the VC.
“Even if seats remain vacant in the department, we will take in students fulfilling the requirements from Gha unit,” the VC said. Past experiences suggest that on an average some 40 plus students vie for each single seat in the DU Admission tests and even 80 percent of the participating candidates could not obtain the qualifying marks in the tests. That speaks only of the poor standard of our secondary level educations.
While it is true that allowing only the freshly passed graduates would lessen fraudulence and indeed level the playing field, it would also mean that those unfortunate few who were unable to pass the exam once would – though no fault of their own — be unable to pass it again. This would also increase the imbalance and probably put more pressure on the HSC candidates who would now face the double pressure of studying not just for their HSC exams but also the DU entrance exams.
Given the rate of passes in the admission tests, two things are probable – either the country’s educational system is failing or the standard for the DU admission test is too high. Whatever the cause may be – the conclusions are clear. The educational system has to be more analytical and less rote based, and the admission test standards have to be evaluated by an outside committee to ensure that they are not extraordinarily rigorous or demanding – at the very least the university should be able to get enough students to pass its entrance exams. For ensuring better talented candidates to be enrolled in the courses, we would advise the Dhaka University authorities to reconsider their decision in line with the PSC exams in which one can appear more than once.
