Clash within private universities in Bangladesh

by Gopal Sengupta
March 5, 2012

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/2148/clash-within-private-universities-in-bangladesh

On last Saturday, the students of Primeasia University and Southeast University clashed for over three hours over the alleged stalking of a female student. During the clash, at least 50 students and 10 policemen were injured and over 100 vehicles and 15 buildings were vandalised. The authorities closed Primeasia University for an indefinite period while Southeast University was closed for two days following the clash. Police sued 2,000 unnamed students of two private universities on the following day as those students have been charged with vandalising vehicles, university buildings and roadside shops; attacking police and obstructing them from discharging duties; barring traffic movements and creating anarchy in the area. This incident has raised more questions in common peoples' mind that where our higher education leading our future generation?

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong. An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't. No man who worships education has got the best out of education. No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. There is nothing as stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course. To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks. Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?

Quoting Albert Einstein, "We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.

We should acknowledge that the state is a very bad regulator of educational quality. Its own institutions are cheating millions of students of a decent education, and the idea that it should bureaucratically standardize and stifle private innovation and experiments ought to be a matter of concern. We probably need minimum accreditation standards, but for most professional courses, the market is as good a regulator as any. Part of the monitoring function can be carried out, not by a centralized body, such as the University Grants Commission, but professional bodies themselves. If students of particular institutions routinely pass examinations that entitle them to professional practice, this is not a bad signal about the quality of institutions they come from. It also gives students a clearer signal of their prospects. Unfortunately, decentralized professional regulation of quality is totally absent. Most universities around the world are adjudged by their ability to get their students returns on their investment, get them jobs. Universities and courses that do not impart the right kinds of skills find it difficult to attract good students and high fees. This kind of competitive pressure is the only way of ensuring proper regulation. While the state has a proper role as a watchdog, we should be wary of too much state regulation, especially where taxpayer money is not at issue.

This is not to exonerate the conduct of private institutions. Many of them are giving sub-standard education, and often the minimum information needed for informed judgments, recruitment patterns, quality of infrastructure etc., is difficult to get. Many institutions are not run by legitimate "education" entrepreneurs, but by a seedy combination of politicians and business. Most of the successful private institutions around the world have run on mixed principles. They combine a philanthropic endowment that allows the institution to subsidize unprofitable activities and good students, with high fees and great discretion over admission. In Bangladesh we hardly have any examples of this kind. Finally, few private institutions have shown any long-term vision in education, creating pedagogical experiments that others could follow. The state is in part to blame for this: the requirement that most private colleges be linked to state university curricula has stifled innovation. UGC have such preconceived ideas of the format of education that it is difficult to innovate. But our private entrepreneurs have not acquired the self-conscious ideology of delivering excellent products that so many successful private institutions around the world have. But these are not sufficient reasons to place more restrictions on private institutions. We need to make education broadly available, but restricting the freedoms of those who are willing to invest and willing to pay for education is self-defeating. The education sector needs more supply and less regulation.

Related Topics:  International News receive the latest by email: subscribe to weekly blitz's free mailing list