Nothing perhaps describes corruption in the education system more glaringly than the metaphor “darkness under the lamp.” In response to this, a question arises: “Why is there always darkness under the lamp?” One blogger came up with the idea that the scenario can be interpreted in a couple of ways – the lamp is like those pretentious people who do not see their own shortcomings, or the lamp is like those benevolent people who spend their entire lives for the welfare of others.
Which interpretation one accepts obviously depends on the context. In our context, where pretentiousness and hypocrisy reign supreme, the first interpretation seems more plausible. But, what surprised me most was the blogger’s additional tip on how to dispel that darkness from under the lamp: “Put another lit lamp near it!”
But, when you choose not to acknowledge the fact that there is darkness under the lamp in the first place, the question of putting another lit lamp does not arise at all. This is perhaps what happened in the case of our education minister’s reaction to the Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) report on corruption in higher education in the private sector.
Terming the TIB report “unacceptable” and “disgraceful,” the education minister seemed to come out of his otherwise sensible demeanour to swoop in on TIB, that claimed to have found “widespread” irregularities, including financial ones in private universities, especially in the process of getting administrative approval for the posts of high executives.
In the perception index of corruption in Bangladesh – as reported from time to time by TIB – the education department unfortunately always had bad figures. Not only a pity, it is also the height of paradox that the department which is entrusted with the responsibility of enkindling the light of education is smeared with so much of the darkness of corruption. Given the historical vulnerability of our education sector to malpractices, the education minister should not have been so taken aback by TIB’s report, let alone swooping in on the watchdog.
Interestingly, my reading of the TIB report coincided with my reading of Indian novelist Chetan Bhagat’s best-selling novel Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, and Ambition. Set in the Indian holy city of Varanasi, the novel describes the rampant corruption apparent in the Indian educational system. I think that not only Bangladesh or India, most of the developing countries are seriously affected by profit-driven and commercialised education systems where corruption lurks as an unalienable partner.
As I went through the novel, I thought a change of the setting from Varanasi to Dhaka would reveal the same phenomenon of the private higher education system in Bangladesh. The education minister and his bureaucratic colleagues may go through the book to have an understanding of the width and breadth of corruption that the higher education system may be susceptible to.
The solution to a problem requires the recognition of the problem first. The way our ministers and bureaucrats tend to brush the problems aside seems to be a futile attempt to keep a storm at bay just by playing blind. But instead of pretending, we need to recognise the problems of darkness and then devise ways of how to dispel it from under the lamp that looms so large in our higher education section in particular.
There is no denying the fact that in the absence of enough public institutes, the private sector in different levels of education – from secondary to tertiary – is playing an important role in providing education services. But that service must provide students with real education and must not be limited to issuing certificates only.
Here comes the question of the quality of education in hundreds of universities of our country – public and private. The University Grants Commission (UGC) can play a vital role in ensuring the quality of education in all higher education institutes. Political commitment coupled with a strengthened UGC will be good enough to ensure that. Once all higher education providers are subjected to some quality-control mechanism, the ill practices which are allegedly rampant in most of the private universities will automatically fade away.
On the other hand, if the role of many private universities is allowed to remain limited in issuing certificates, then the current trend of indulging in corruption will only aggravate because of the profiteering mentality that inspires the establishment of private universities. There is definitely business in the provision of education, but commercial gains must not become more important than the mission that an education provider is supposed to be inspired by – the mission of enlightenment. The government must act as a sentinel in this case to ensure that all public and private educational institutes provide standardised quality education, and obviously not act as an accomplice in their profit-making process in all possible ways – good or bad, ethical or unethical.
