Feature

On private public university deliberation

Farhad Hossain

I am writing in response to the interesting and thought-provoking deliberation for last couple of weeks on the issue of merits and demerits of private and public university. What I have observed that both the parties are very much fierce in their arguments where the editor needs to intervene! Here I want to request both the parties to widen their views and not make sweeping comments. Definitely private and public universities have both merits and demerits. Though I am a public university student I don't have any hesitation to say our peers in private universities are also doing good in their academic and professional career. But this good scenario is discipline and campus dependent. Still in case of technical (medical, engineering etc) education there is no private institution in the country to beat public institutions. For example BUET is in the top rank in its area. The problem they have is not about resources, good students and good teachers but about nasty political affiliation, which brings the curse of session jam. That is the typical problem in all the public universities in the country. But the scenario is changing as we see that some faculties and institutes are really very concern about it. For example, IBA and Department of Management Studies, University of Dhaka.

In my observation I have found out that public - private institutions are abreast in case of BBA program. Here I could share one of my personal experiences. Some days ago I faced the recruitment process of British - American Tobacco Bangladesh Company Limited (BATBCL) and found that the students from IBA, FBS, DU, NSU, IUB and AIUB are competing at the same level. None of them are less qualified. In the final selection what made the difference was not their institution's brand name but their personal capabilities.

In particular response to A.A.M Mostafa Saikh Chowdhury's question "why most students of BUET nowadays don't want to do M.SC rather they want to do MBA in IBA or at some private university, the answer of the question would be very clear if we look at the syllabus and job requirements of the engineers. Morever, this trend in engineers is not new or rare only in the case of BUET engineers but for all engineers. In 1941 James Burnham, a renowned scholar in management said in his book "The Managerial Revolution" that the capitalist society would be replaced by a managerial society with managers taking over every position of importance and with the state ownership of major instruments of production. Why he suggested that? Because these revolutions could increase production, smooth out economic bottlenecks and so on which ultimately signify the importance and universality of management education as well as capabilities. Why Bill Gates is the richest man of the world? Because he has the combination of both skills.

Apart from monetary factor, I would like to conclude by saying that private universities have come as the need of the time. Besides criticizing we need to nurture these institutes as they are only in their childhood at the moment. They have a direct as well as indirect contribution to our national development. Along with the over all development of public universities teaching qualities will also improve. On an average public universities are still better but in some cases some private universities excel over them. To ensure sustainable, balanced and harmonious development of our country we should make a student exchange program between public and private universities.