Our students at the private universities mostly represent the upper echelon of the society. Their domains are in areas where they are able to influence the opinion leaders of the society and, at times, directly shape their mindsets. In addition to these students, a small segment of students come from the middleclass background; they take upon themselves significant financial hardship to continue their private university education.

Society and its well-being depends on economic welfare of its citizens and of which students are a large majority. Intellectual development of the society also depends on how aptly we formulate and impart education to our citizens. With a vision to create a prosperous Bangladesh our students' intellectual capital needs to be augmented by advocating growth through expanding the frontiers of knowledge and societal opinion shaping.

The society at present has a narrow focus on education. Its role in education, personal life, professional development and intellectual nurturing of our minds has been more or less confined to classroom teaching, some interactive learning and sparsely used instructional training methodology. This approach has been inconsistent and the resultant effort has not made any real breakthrough in our current reality of academic standards; it has neither given any hope for the advancement of the academic standards at the tertiary level educational institutions.

The private university system in Bangladesh so far has been operating as an extension of education methodology followed by colleges in Bangladesh where classroom teaching is the main focus of learning. This methodology can work at the college level, but by the standards of university education and what ought to be the onus of university education, it is beyond comprehension that universities in Bangladesh do not have an iota of research funding, let alone research facility, infrastructure, labs or even the systems to look for research grants. The envisaged growth can only be achieved through the findings of 'new knowledge through research' and that is the fundamental difference between a college and a university. This notion perhaps has not permeated into the psyche of our university sponsors and administrators and sadly the faculty are more keen on teaching than researching.

It is true that undertaking research tantamounts to single-minded dedication that may turn out to be a thankless job when no system of incentives or accolades are there at institutions of higher learning. However, universities across the globe achieve fame and recognition when they show that their faculty and scholars have engaged in scholarly research and that their institutions have become 'hot-bed of new found knowledge and innovation.'

Our current state of university education is a reflection of the sad economic position of the country. We grew up with such lofty statements as 'education is the backbone of a nation,' and 'one ought to travel to China for education, if need be.' These have merely remained hollow without creating much impact on our education system. Our limited progress in the areas of academia does not bode well amongst the competitive polity of nations. Due to lack of definitive improvement in comparison to other nations, we may fall deep into the dungeons of the digital divide, precariously aggravating economic downfall of our nation. In this connection let us admit to ourselves that private education system, if it indeed wants to gain acceptance in the eyes of the general public, should ensure better academic standards, facility and infrastructure for its students.

Historically, private education system has really been coined by the industrial West, allowing for their rich people's sons and daughters an alternative to public education. Internationally private education is highly sought after as indeed the quality of education rendered is unquestionable. However, it is distastefully true that private education standards at the university level in Bangladesh is much below even in comparison to education offered by most public universities, although the cost of private university education is exponential to public university education. These anomalies are what I request the policy makers, educationist and social reformists to debate and rectify. Let us embolden our nation's centers of excellence by truly committing to quality education.

In the tertiary level, commonly termed as the university education, one ought to focus on the following areas: a) Basic Skill Set Development, b) Subject Matter Expertise, c) Interpersonal Skills, d) Learn Research Methodology. Culmination of all of these skills in a student actually develops his/her total human resource capacity. Human resource in the 21st century is viewed as source of intelligence, creativity, knowledge having the ability to work under time-bound deadlines and collaborative environment. However, have these paradigm shifts affected the cultural orientation of the people at the helm of affairs?

We as a nation tend to follow others than create our own structures. Unfortunately, the speed at which we tend to play the role of a copy-cat is dismal; therefore, the changes that we see in our systems of operation and university education, have been tested and discarded by other advanced nations. No wonder why, we are not being able to produce quality graduates. Education should be fluid and changes within the system and curriculum need to be kept contemporary and in line with what is happening in, say, the industry; it should not be confined to such theory that perhaps has no functional currency. Industry and academics should go hand-in-hand for students to relate theory with the real world. However, due to minimal industry involvement in running programs at the private university level, our graduates are getting short-changed for their learning is not application oriented.

The private universities chart their growth plan focusing mainly on tuition fees collected from the students. However, universities in other countries and even in our neighbouring countries, strategise on collecting a large pool of research and development funds from corporations, donor organisations, charitable organizations, trade bodies, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, trusts and government grants. A strong emphasis on public-private partnership helps to build the infrastructure and research facility of a university. These essentially vital support help the students and faculty to engage in not only scholarly research, but also allow them to participate in learning industrial applications. Advancement of new knowledge can only be harnessed if this culture of resource pooling from multiple sources is cultivated, and only then the private universities will begin to look like 'true centers of advanced education.' The government may also allow tax deduction provisions for funds donated to the private or public universities.

Governance of the private university system is also suspect and I feel that university administrative policies, departmental policies and most aspects of university affairs should be under the jurisdiction and guidance of individuals coming mainly from academia, industry, and social bodies. In line with the public university system, the private university system needs to re-invent itself by positioning itself as front-runner in every possible domain of knowledge. The common practice in Bangladesh has been to set up various departments and run programmes under these departments. I propose that some universities may create some centres of excellence that may have there own infrastructure and not be part of any department but independently managed facilities so that any department from within or outside or any external organisation can work jointly with. Some focal areas that may be considered are: Thought Leadership Centre, Human Resource Development Centre, World Culture and Heritage Centre, Technology Centre, etc. Through this pooling of funds, infrastructure and human resource, university education, especially the private university education, will gain credibility and stature; most notably, research, development and academic standards will get a facelift improving the image of our country.

Ziaur Rahman is a faculty, Manarat International University.