In a country like Bangladesh where higher education is a luxury to a large number of people, almost 900,000 students passed the Higher Secondary School Certificate examination this year.
With a dream for higher education and a better future, many of them are yet to sit for the admission tests in the best universities of this densely populated country this year. Moreover, many students who were unable to qualify to study in the best universities of this country will be sitting for the admission tests of different universities.
With each passing day, the competition to get access to study in the celebrated universities of the country is getting tougher than ever. While the number of students is rapidly being amplified each year, the number of public universities or the number of seats for the students are not increasing at the same rate.
So it is obvious that a large number of students will not be able to study in prominent public universities. They either have to give up or they have to try to get admission in other privately-owned universities.As the tuition fees and other fees in these universities are much higher than in public universities, the students who want to study in these institutions have to be careful while choosing where to study.
So the private universities are not at rest. With lucrative advertisements and, if needed, using some misleading information, they are luring the students to their institutions. Students often get puzzled while choosing the best institution to study in due to the information provided by the universities that are often wrong or devoid of authenticity.
Half the truth is often a whole lie. A couple of years ago, some newspapers published a news story referring to some rankings. Those newspapers claimed that the standard of education in University of Dhaka has degraded. It has failed to secure its position among the top five thousand universities in the world. According to the rankings, even a privately-owned university, established just a decade ago, outpaced the University of Dhaka.
More surprisingly, not a single medical college or the only medical university of Bangladesh was seen in the top 20 Bangladeshi universities in the “so called” rankings of universities.
However, after detailed inquiry, it was proven that the rankings referred to by those dailies was actually a ranking of the websites of the universities. This ranking system is known as the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. This is a ranking system for the world’s universities based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the web contents and the visibility and impact of these web publications according to the number of externals in links they received.
Moreover, the process of that ranking had little to do with the standard of education of the institutions. The only thing it cared about was the quality of the websites of the universities.
Ironically, the privately-owned university that outpaced the University of Dhaka in Webometrics ranking and which ranked as the second-best university of Bangladesh for its website is still using the ranking, claiming themselves as one of the best universities of Bangladesh.
A prominent educationist who was also a Vice-Chancellor to a privately-owned university was misled by this ranking and even claimed that the only university with whom the private universities are contesting with is the Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (BUET). He proclaimed that within five years, the private universities will outpace all other public universities and will be topping all the rankings.
Another Bangladeshi university in 2011 claimed that they have been awarded Asia’s Best Business School Leadership Award presented by the CMO Asia Advisory Board. The university then launched a campaign in the social media sites using the news to attract the new students.
This award also raised questions as there are plenty of business schools that are better than the business school that was awarded by CMO as the best of Asia, even in Bangladesh. But after some inquisition over the issue, it was clear that the claim was a half truth.
In the same year, the CMO selected the 13 best business schools of Asia as a part of their second Asia’s Best B-School Award program. The university that claimed that they have been awarded Asia’s Best Business School Leadership Award was ranked sixth in the ranking of B-School Leadership Award, while the Faculty of Business Studies of the University of Dhaka, one of the most eminent business schools of Bangladesh, was ranked fourth in the same ranking.
Such rankings often confuse the students who are craving to enter the arena of higher education and leave them at complete loss. The dreams of a good number of students are shattered every year, who leave their institutions due to the frustration that emerges because of the environment and the quality of education of those institutions.
The Bangladesh chapter of Transparency International, in a study, asserted that rampant corruption is evident in many of the universities. The wide-ranging corruption spree in those institutions includes using the name of famous educationists as a faculty of the university illegally, bribing the externals, bribing the teachers, manipulating campus inspections, selling certificates etc. On July 11, 2014, a pro-vice-chancellor was detained while selling certificates of his university.
There are also some other universities that use tickling advertisements to lure new students. These universities often try to gain cheap publicity byportraying a handful of girls in a single advertisement or fake success stories of some unknown individuals.
However, every cloud has a silver lining. The University Grants Commission has decided to formulate a ranking system focusing on the standard of education of the universities this year. The commission will be monitoring the universities very closely.
The objective of this article is not to defame the universities that are playing a vital role in the education system of Bangladesh, but to make students aware of the confusion that they may face because of the widespread campaign and misleading information provided by those universities. It is high time to cut the crap and let these students move ahead for a better future.
