The Dhaka University (DU) admission committee has recommended reducing as many as 1,085 seats for honours first year students from the 2021-22 academic year.
The committee also moved to abolish the undergraduate admission test for D unit under the social science faculty.
The decisions were taken at a meeting at the university's Nawab Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate building on Monday.
The move will improve the quality of education and develop adequate skilled human resources, claim the university authorities.
DU Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Md Akhtaruzzaman said the decision had been taken considering the capacity of the university as well as national and international needs.
The decision will be finalized after discussion at the meeting of the Academic Council of the university, he added.
Dr ASM Maksud Kamal, pro vice-chancellor (academic) of the university, said that if the recommendation was implemented, there would be one teacher for every 16 students in the classroom.
As per the decision taken at the meeting, the university's deans' sub-committee, with Prof Abdul Basir in chair, has been assigned the responsibility of formulating a policy to admit students through B unit examination instead of D unit.
Prof Abdul Basir said: "The D unit, which used to hold admission tests for changing groups, will no longer exist in the 2021-22 session. Instead, students of science and commerce will participate in the B unit admission tests under the Faculty of Arts to change their department.”
The proposal would be finalized at the academic council meeting of the university, which would be called soon, said Prof ASM Maksud Kamal.
In the light of the proposal, a notice was issued stating that a sub-committee would work to formulate a policy for changing the unit of students for admission under the Deans Committee.
On January 5, a special meeting of the Deans Committee recommended bringing down 1,000 seats for freshers’ enrolment from the next academic year. The meeting noted that the existing number of seats was not sustainable with the DU’s infrastructure.
However, the plan to reassess the number of seats in the name of improving the quality of education elicited mixed reactions from academics.
Earlier, Education Minister Dipu Moni urged the university authorities to prepare an academic master plan before the infrastructure master plan.
Students participated in the admission tests of all units for 7,053 seats in the 2020-21 academic year.
About 36,000 students are currently studying in 83 departments under 13 faculties of Dhaka University.
