Dr. M. M. Shahidul Hassan :
After being liberated as an independent country in 1971, Bangladesh started its higher education journey with six public universities with 26,390 students. Now the number of public universities has increased to 50, and the number of private universities is 103. The National University and Open University, a distance learning university, were established in 1992 to provide higher education to students from low-income families. At present about 2.5 million students are studying at universities. And 1.37 million students are waiting to be admitted to universities. Whereas, the seat capacity for HSC and equivalent certificate passed students is around 1.24 million. Therefore, 12% of students will be deprived of getting higher study. On the other hand, the government wants to build a knowledge-based society by educating children and youth. In a knowledge-based society, youths must be highly educated, and they must acquire cognitive skills such as critical thinking, complex problem solving, innovation, collaboration and communication, entrepreneurial thinking, and lifelong learning, and also possess soft skills. Learnability does not mean the acquisition of only subject knowledge but also is a function of both soft skills and cognitive skills. Soft skills are self-awareness or metacognition, motivation, curiosity, teamwork, grit, resilience, and adaptability. Cognitive skills are best taught at the early stages of education, and soft skills remain highly flexible and can be cultivated at later stages. Therefore, our children who are or will be at primary school need to be taught cognitive skills. This is a very challenging task for the government, policymakers, and academics.
Out of the 164 million population, the population aged 11-16 years is above 56 million, and the growth rate of this age group is about 2%. Our 153 universities are not in a position to take such a large number of students. However, we cannot build many universities overnight, and we cannot find many qualified teachers. Therefore, we need to explore all the ways to solve this problem. Also, the universities have to produce the kind of graduates that are needed in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, i.e., knowledge-based society. As an educator, perhaps my knowledge and experience can allow me to discuss teaching and learning systems that might help in increasing the student’s annual enrollment while maintaining quality education. I will discuss academic calendars that can contribute to increasing student enrollment each year. Many more universities need to be established in the future to meet the demand for higher education, and the number of Ph.D. teachers has to be increased.
Nowadays there are many universities around the world that use academic calendars different from two-semester calendar hoping to better suit the needs of their students and maximize campus resources. In two-semesters students do not have to come school in summer. Considering the society of that time, two-semester calendar was introduced. The school year in the U.S. and many other countries was based on an agrarian society where the summer was used to do work on the farm. That was the reason for the introduction of the semester calendar in those countries. Even in the era of the industrial revolution, many universities did not change the academic calendar as many students opt to work and/or play during the summer. However, later the universities have introduced two short summer sessions. Two short summer sessions bring a huge opportunity for students to retake old courses where they have low CGPA and for those who want to finish their degree early. Whatever it is, the system is rapidly changing now.
Public universities in Bangladesh have been continuing this traditional calendar. On the other hand, we can see the prevalence of the trimester system in private universities. There are many academics who criticize this trimester calendar, arguing that students do not learn much from three 13-week sessions. Therefore, it should be made clear that the quality of education is not compromised in any of the other systems that are in practice. The world-class higher learning institution MIT follows a quarter academic calendar. In a quarter system, the academic year is divided into four regular sessions: fall, winter, spring, and summer. With a quarter system, each session lasts approximately ten weeks. MIT also does not define courses by credits. MIT uses units. One credit is equivalent to three MIT units. MIT certainly did not compromise on quality education.
In the semester system, a degree is awarded to a student once he/she completes some credits specified in his/her program. For a 15-week class excluding final exams week, a course with 50 minutes of instruction per week and a minimum of 2 hours of out-of-class student work each week is equated with one semester hour of credit. One semester credit hour for a theory course will be awarded for a minimum of 1×50×15 = 750 minutes of instruction that typically requires students to work at out-of-class work an average amount of time 1x2x60x15 = 1,800 minutes. For other calendar systems, we can satisfy the credit requirements by applying the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time or the equivalent effort over a different time frame. For example, by lengthening the instruction hour from 50 to 60 minutes and 20 minutes out-of-class times each week the total credit requirements can be satisfied for the trimester system. Under the trimester calendar, universities can take a relatively large number of students each year with their infrastructure, teachers and staff. Since students pay tuition fees three times a year, the fees that students pay each time are at a tolerable level.
Since universities can enroll more students in the trimester while maintaining the quality of education, future established universities may adopt trimester calendar to reduce the number of students deprived of access to higher education. At present there is a shortage of teachers with PhD degree in the country and there will be a huge demand for PhD teachers for future established universities. So, to fill the gap, UGC should consider allowing private universities to introduce PhD programs.
(M. M. Shahidul Hassan is Vice Chancellor, East West University,
Email: [email protected]).
