NEWS reports said students seeking admission into public medical colleges demonstrated in different parts of the country demanding fresh admission test again due to question paper leakage; which was also circulated in social network in the night before. It is sad as the flawed test will deny many meritorious students of the admission while poorly qualified students will beat them in their fight for career. It is not acceptable. Experts have blamed the BG Press as the most vulnerable place for question papers leakage and suggested that as the first step to stop the leakage, the government must stop printing question papers from the BG Press. In our view it is a right suggestion and may be followed.
News reports said the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested three people including an assistant director of the University Grants Commission (UGC) for their alleged involvement in leaking questions of different competitive exams including the medical college admission test. They also seized two question papers and several answer sheets of the Assistant Judge Recruitment Test of Judicial Service Commission 2014, in addition to Tk 2 lakh in cash and a cheque of Tk 4 lakh along with cheque books of different banks. Three mobile phones, an iPad were also recovered from them after raiding the UGC’s office at the capital’s Agargaon as the media report said.
The credibility of public exams has come under question again and again due to the leakage of the question papers of major exams. Even though our country has a generally low literacy rate, it seems that the authorities and the students themselves care little about such an important issue such as education. They are serious to get a higher ‘degree or certificate’, by using many unscrupulous means to achieve what is not rightfully theirs. Corrupt academics like the UGC official and government officials are running brisk business sitting at important positions in an attempt to make enormous wealth.
The recent disclosure of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) showed how the networks of organized groups are at work to leak the questions. They are active from the stage of question preparation to printing at BG Press and distribution. They sell the question papers from a minimal price to a very high cost depending on the situation. Less qualified candidates for higher government jobs buy these questions and beat the qualified ones making such exams an unhealthy competition for better government jobs or getting degrees by students at higher grades that they don’t deserve. The impact of poor selection has already damaged the nation by putting wrong people at high places, which they would not have qualified, in fairly held competitive examinations.
Public examinations have assumed the nature of a business venture to the vested interest quarters working around the process and they must be rooted out to restore the credibility of the exams in the public eyes. Protest by medical students showed it again.
