Criticism as such is an exercise of right and invoking responsibility as well. It is a right in the sense that as a member and institution of the larger society any university cannot stay above criticism. It is a responsibility because the critic is expected to follow certain norms to establish his or her intellectual product, in this case the criticism. One may put forth another point that in favour of criticism and it is the fact that the public university is run by public money. Had it been even run by private money, criticism could have been there from among its clients.

Coming back to the main theme, if I take the case of DU what I would find on the plate dishing out criticism may be reproduced in the following manner:

i. The educational level is not of desired level;

ii. Whatever educational level was there in the past has been deteriorated, particularly after 1971;

iii. The historical image that DU was the Oxford of the East (!) is gone.

Now if we go through above points one by one what do we learn? The so called 'desired' level of education is unknown to most of us. In other words the meaning of 'desired' level is both subjective and relative. It significantly varies from person to person. For example, when a person who is critiquing without legitimate and adequate experience of learning about such institution, then he would be projecting an image that would be at best shapeless and amorphous. When the critic is from some reputed educational institution he would be happy to see such an institution in his own soil. As most of us know the exercise of evaluation is a methodical one. You need a precise framework and indicators to do such a job. It may also have horizontal and vertical depth. For example, you may evaluate over a period of time as well as case by case. In this case, any university is composed of several departments and you may choose individual departments. I am perplexed to see the intellectual poverty of the critics, hardly they have done any rigorous homework to present their results.

In order to carry out the evaluation of an institution no lesser than a university there is need for competence and experience both. What readily comes to your mind in the form of indicators may include qualification and competence of the faculty, routine progress of educational session, competence level of the graduates or the research acumen of the faculty. To what extent such parameters have been carefully examined before the presentation of the criticism is not known to the constituency target of such tirades. How many of our critics are aware of the research publications made by different faculties in the prestigious journals, or how much is known about the intellectual reputation enjoyed by the faculties both at home and abroad? It is not difficult to point out that an institution of Bangladesh is less good than that of another country. While we make such comparison we should not forget a term called 'given context'. It refers to the limitation of comparison. You should not forget that our universities operate under certain demographic and financial pressure. The number of enrolment increases in a routine manner not compatible with the structure of a university with the goal of intensive interactions at different levels. Another fact is the salary structure in a market economy. Opportunity cost of the highly qualified people vis a vis the salary structure of the universities is no match. The perk offered to a faculty is a dull package when compared to the one provided in the multinational, multilateral and some other organisations. One has to instill adequate amount of subjective inspiration to compensate for the forgone perks. It is hoped that the enthusiastic critic of the universities will care to take this point into consideration while offering their criticism in future.

About the regularity of classes and the competence level of the graduates the facts are not classified or unknown. You have political disturbances that may disrupt the classes, but the evidence of deliberate neglect of classes is far from a common feat. Both the public and private employers will be more eligible to certify on the competence level of the graduates coming out of the public universities.

Next comes the situation in pre-1971 in the universities. Anyone feel elated to recount his colourful pedigree. The same applies to us also. Still such records are not abound that speak of vibrant research milieu in the then universities. The number of research journals published from different universities at that period was either nil or a few. You may like to differentiate between quantity and quality, again the finding would not be a very pleasant one in this particular respect. Actually the critics often forget the societal context. In a country (erstwhile East Pakistan) with an incipient capitalism within a predatory colonialism you would hardly notice the educational institutions to be productive ones. Without adequate functional necessity of the society the pressure of external factors to produce competent university graduates will be very minimum. Following this logic it is difficult to assume that the pre-1971 was a golden period for our universities.

Thirdly comes the myth of "Oxford of the East'. Sometimes it seems to me: are we struggling with a ghost to build our image in a renewed manner? It has turned into a cliché that once the DU was the Oxford of the East. Again the issue of factual judgment comes in: Is the claim mere conjectural? Was there really a time which you can boast of as being the replication of the Oxford? Often we like to build a myth and subject ourselves to it. Through such act we satiate our certain primordial feelings related to worshipping. Our objective is not to belittle the past, but rather to identify the actual reality when the purpose is making comparisons between two periods. There are skeptics who feel that the current salvo of criticism against the public universities has certain goal to achieve and it is nothing than the removal/modification of the 1973 Ordinance, a logical product of the democratic revolutionary movement of the country. The targeted constituency is well aware of their responsibility to match the operation of the historical Ordinance.

Monirul I Khan is Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Dhaka.