Nazrul Islam :
Whether the number of technical universities in the country is going to be higher than the general universities- we may give different opinions in response to this question.
The number of government universities in our country is forty-one. All these universities, run as autonomous institutions, are financed by the government. Of these fourteen universities are general only; rest are science and technology based. In addition, there are three specialized, four medical and one maritime university we have. It is noteworthy that, in our country, there are more technical and specialized universities than the general.
Meanwhile, it was announced that an industrial university, first of its kind in the country, will be established under the Ministry of Industries. Since 2008, we got eighteen new universities and fourteen of them are technical. The initiative of establishing the universities must be worthy of appreciation, but it looks that we are more concerned on establishing technical university than general.
On August 13 in 2018, the Ministry of Education announced that the government is going to approve three new universities. These universities will be set up in three different districts of the country. They are Bogura University of Science and Technology, Chandpur University of Science and Technology and Laxmipur University of Science and Technology. Apparently, a competition has been initiated among the different regions of the country to have universities.
We all know, fundamentally, the main task of a university is three- distribution of knowledge, gathering of knowledge and creating of knowledge. While establishing the universities of science and technology in different regions, we must think that there have enough resources in that university to do these three tasks appropriately. If the quality decreases to increase the number, it will only benefit the particular group, not the country.
On June 25, in a national newspaper, a former president of the Institution of Diploma Engineers, Bangladesh wrote, ‘today, the ministry of industries has thought of industrial universities to meet the needs of skilled and trained human resources. In continuation of this, Transport University, Railway University, Tourism University, Law University, Food University, Public Administration University, Cultural University- each ministry will be interested to establish university to meet their needs.’
As an autonomous institution, every university is administered by the University Act. In this act, a special power and authority has been given to the Vice-chancellor. By applying this power and authority, the university can open new faculties, departments, institutes, centers or courses, appoint manpower and enroll students as well.
We can remember, on September 6 in 2016, the University Grants Commission was bound to publish a public-announcement of alerting six universities for opening new departments without approval. It was seen that the ‘University of Humanity’ was approved, but after some time the university was teaching different subjects like Business Administration, CSC, EEE, Nautical Engineering, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Aviation Science & Engineering, International Relations etc.
In 1977, organized by OIC, a conference of the muslim world was held in Mecca. There was a proposal to establish Islamic universities in different Muslim countries. Based on this proposal, in 1979, Islamic University was established in Kushtia. But now, the different subjects under the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Engineering & Technology, Faculty of Biological Sciences and Faculty of Business Administration are teaching here.
We have an innate habit of over-riding and competing everywhere. It is necessary to examine how many doctors, researchers, engineers, agriculturists, nurses, technicians’ etc. are really needed for the country.
(Nazrul Islam, MPhil researcher, School of Education, Bangladesh Open University; email: [email protected])
