Dhaka Thursday February 25, 2010

Higher education deficits in a drift

Abdul Mannan
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When Professor Gowher Rizvi, Adviser to the Prime Minister on International Affairs and the immediate past Director of the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government disclosed recently at the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh's Foundation Day Lecture that not a single university from Bangladesh featured amongst the top one hundred universities of Asia, few jaws dropped and a murmur passed around the packed Society conference auditorium at the Nimtali Palace in Dhaka. For many this was hardly a breaking news but definitely something to think about. Professor Rizvi was giving the key note speech on 'Reinventing Universities: Higher Education in a Global Society.' The Times Higher Education Supplement of London, one of the most credible source of world university ranking published its 2009 index recently and out of one hundred top world universities five came from Japan, five from China (including three from Hong Kong), two from South Korea, two from Singapore and one from Taiwan. Not a single one from the Subcontinent. IIT-Mumbai featured 163rd while IIT-Delhi 181st. Amongst the top one hundred from Asia, India has only four, all being its IITs.

Ranjit Dev Raj, an analyst based in Delhi, writing for Hong Kong based Asia Times few years back published a feature titled 'South Asia emerges as anti-education zone' and wrote '….(South Asia) has emerged as the most illiterate region in the world with 400 million adults in the region accounting for half the world's unlettered.' Dev Raj also lamented that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh together contain over 97 percent of South Asia's illiterate adult population. When the overall literacy level in Bangladesh is still average, there will be less of a chance of higher education and related institutions showing any sign of being visible even in the regional radar of quality higher education. Something has gone wrong over the years. So according to the ambitious wishes of Professor Rizvi for reinventing our universities for a respectable place in Global Society we will have to first make them regionally visible and competitive.

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Geneva based World Economic Forum (WEF) publishes annually the Global Competitiveness Report, measuring and ranking the participating countries according to its competitiveness. It uses three parameters and twelve sub-variables while preparing its Report. WEF terms the Basic Requirements as 'key for factor-driven economies' and includes as sub variables institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability and health and primary education. The second parameter is termed as Efficiency Enhancers and terms them as 'key for efficiency-driven economics.' This parameter includes factors as higher education and training; goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technology readiness and market size. The third and the last parameter is Innovation and Sophistication Factors, known as 'key for innovation-driven economies,' and include variables as business sophistication and innovation. In the overall ranking Bangladesh is ranked 106th (previous year-111th.) and in the Higher Education category it is ranked 129th. amongst 133 countries that participated in the report preparation.

Looking at the above mentioned rankings and reports it is safe to conclude that things have not gone exactly right in our higher education sector over the years though the demand for higher education (university and professional levels) have grown since our independence. When Bangladesh became an independent nation in 1971 the country had only four public and two specialized universities and six medical and dental colleges around the country. Less than 1% of the country's population of 75 million went to colleges and universities for higher education. In the course of about four decades the country's population has more than doubled along with the manifold increase in the demand for higher education while currently still less than 1% of the country's population is enrolled in its colleges and universities including specialised educational institutions. In the last four decades, neither the quantity nor the quality of higher education could match the demand either for the country or the region. The crisis of providing quality higher education continues to grow though all post-independence governments declared improving the quality and availability of more access to quantity will be one of their priorities.

Currently the country has 31 public universities and 51 private universities. Of the total enrollment in the universities 56.56% percent are enrolled in public and 43.44 percent in private universities. Out of the public universities the National University is an affiliating university which has 1,750 colleges under its affiliation and 9, 39,730 students are enrolled. Bangladesh Open University provides education in distance mode and currently 4,200 students are enrolled in its degree programmes. Besides these two universities the rest 29 universities have a student enrollment of 2,37,839 while 1,82,641 students are enrolled in 51 private universities. The country also has two international universities, the International Islamic of Technology in Gazipur, funded by the OIC and the International Women University in Chittagong (Asian University for Women) set up by a consortium in US. Approximately 15 percent of potential students can have access to higher education in the country every year. This shows the tremendous demand-supply imbalance of higher education in the country. However the most important concern in the higher education sector is the challenge of providing quality education which has been the result of continuous inadequate funding in this sector and absence of competent academic leadership.

The public universities are public funded. 90 percent of its recurring budget and 100 percent of its development budget comes from the public exchequer. The students and other sources provide 10 percent of the recurring expenditure. Since 1971 whatever was earmarked for education in the annual development budget of the country university education never received beyond one percent of this allocation. Only in 2003-04 fiscal year it received an allocation of 1.06 percent. During 2008-09 this allocation came down to 0.66 percent. The allocation for the recurring expenses is also very similar and of this about 70 percent of the expenses goes for salaries and maintenance. The entire private university funding is by its founders or the students. In Bangladesh, as expected all the universities are teaching universities with little or no room for any exploratory or primary research. The salaries of teachers are poor by any standard and funding for research and publication is inadequate. A fresh faculty member in public universities receives a monthly remuneration not exceeding Taka 15,000/-, has no health insurance or free on-campus accommodation. Gone are the days when universities were able to attract the best and the brightest graduates, highly motivated to teaching and research.

Mediocrity has replaced merit in most of the public universities and recently there was a report that in a leading university of the country, the Chairperson of the teacher selection committee, who also happens to be the Pro-Vice-chancellor of the same university decided to recruit his wife as a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics though her position in the merit list of candidates was 27th out of 27 candidates. In some universities such practice became a regular phenomenon since 2001 and still continues to plague some of them.

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A seat of higher learning such as a university will produce such graduates whose level of intelligence will normally be expected to reflect those of its teachers. Teachers these days are thought of as mentors and coaches and hence they should be the best of the best. The skill of teaching is an art and unfortunately our university teachers have to learn this on the job. There is no provision for a young lecturer to learn the art and skill of teaching and reading out of text book replaces actual teaching in class room. Unless this practice improves we cannot expect to improve the quality of teaching in either public or private universities. The quality of and commitment to teaching must be restored and refined and reformed further. The big question is where does it all begin? It should all begin with change in the policy of recruitment and remuneration package of university and college teachers. This would also be an appropriate prescription for teachers at all levels. However this is not within the purview of this commentary. If bank employees and airlines pilots or some other professionals could demand and get better remuneration in their profession why teachers should not be included in this category? After all they are the people who are entrusted with the important responsibility of building the much needed human capital for the country. As mentioned the public universities received a very insignificant budget allocation. This was neither sufficient for their academic purpose nor for infrastructure development. Politicization of faculty recruitment has become endemic in recent times. Political affiliation of those recruited quite often replaced quality. Some private universities have an excellent practice of asking job seekers to give a presentation before the faculty members. They decide who faces the selection board. No public university in this country ever practiced this. A newly recruited faculty member can be assigned to a senior faculty member as an apprentice learner for three to six months. This will enable him to get an opportunity to develop his teaching skills.

All our universities being teaching universities, research hardly gets the priority it deserves. A young lecturer either in public or private university has to teach ten to twelve hours per week. In certain cases it may even go up higher. This does not leave much time for research. Funding of research projects has always been a problem. The recently published UGC report (2008) is indicative. In 2006 the total number of researchers enrolled in public universities in M.Phil and Ph.D programmes were 5,692 which came down to 2,698 in 2008. Private universities are not mandated to take in M.Phil or Ph.D researchers. Unless these conditions improve it is futile to expect either in number of researchers or the quality of researches undertaken.

Another cause for alarm compared with the rapid growth of enrollment in the social sciences and humanities disciplines the growth of enrollment in basic science is on the decline though there is a marginal improvement of enrollment in applied science. During 2006-2008 the number of public universities increased from 20 to 31, and of the increased number half is designated as science and technology universities. This is the result of our higher education being more job focused than being knowledge oriented. Though the scope of providing science based education is limited in private universities, approximately 27 percent (Total 48,888) of enrollment of students were in science related subjects, though not necessarily in basic sciences. This includes enrollment in medicine, engineering and agriculture.

Teaching aids in most universities are still rudimentary, class rooms are often crowded resembling sweat shops. A teacher not showing up in class on time or canceling class without any prior notice is very common in many departments of public universities. Unless accountability of teachers is restored such practice will prevail. Most private universities have developed a culture of evaluation of teachers by students. This plays an important role in the extension of contract, pay raise and promotion. This has yielded an exemplary result. Many public university teachers in Dhaka and Chittagong teach in private universities and they have accepted this practice. All teachers, in public universities should also go through this evaluation process. Such practices are very common world wide in universities of repute.

Not only the demand for higher education and qualified and skilled human resources has increased in Bangladesh manifold in recent times, such demand will also increase at a greater pace in the developed countries of West, Japan and other emerging industrially developed countries. The fast ageing of the population in these countries will cause drying up of its own source of the much needed human capital to keep their economic machinery in motion. Countries like Bangladesh can reap a good dividend with its large population, provided it is able to transform its population from human being into human resources. Amongst other skill development programmes it has to emphasise improvement of the quality of higher education. Our universities may not immediately play in the same league with Ivy League universities or with Cambridge and Oxford. But we can be in the same pool with the top hundred universities of the region. For this the entire higher education philosophy needs immediate reform, the UGC instead of playing the role of absolute regulator should take the role of facilitator. It suffers from stagnancy of thought and inadequate manpower. In recent times it has devoted more time in unnecessarily whipping private universities instead of playing a facilitator's role. It needs complete overhauling. People like Prof. Rizvi is in the right position to advise the government on these issues and initiate the much needed change in our higher education sector. Time is running out. Opportunities for playing with the big names in the region once lost may take a long time to recover. Mediocrity can never compete with meritocracy. The government often declares establishing new universities. Currently the emphasis should more be on consolidating what we have rather than increasing the numbers. We need to restore the confidence in our university education system. Sooner we realise this the better.

The author is a former Vice-Chancellor, Chittagong University. Currently he teaches at ULAB, Dhaka.

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