More than ever, students are pursuing higher education by the score. Because the public universities of Bangladesh do not have enough seats for all the students who want to enrol for graduate programs, more and more admission seekers are turning to private universities. While the way public and private universities run should be more or less the same in theory, they are quite different from each other in practice. There are a number of factors that make them different.
The first of these factors is how strictly the rules of a university are followed, both by the students and teachers. There is a yawning gap between public and private universities when it comes to following rules. One example of such rules is in question: How many classes does a student have to attend at the least in order to qualify for taking a mid-term or semester final test of a course?
Another example is: What should be done when a university student misses, for instance, a class test. My past experience as a student and present experience as a teacher tell me that such rules are obeyed much more strictly in public universities than in private ones. This and other observations in this article are based on generalisations, which admit of any exceptions.
It is arguable that employers in our country, who have come to know and care about these differences between public and private universities in their own personal ways, give expression to their preferences about universities through their job postings.
I have seen a number of job advertisements in newspapers and online where the employers mentioned, not without reason, one of the following conditions: Applicants from public universities preferred, applicants should be from public universities, and applicants should be from a public university or NSU, East West, AIUB, Brac, and IUB. Although not so common, the reverse also happens: Only those from private universities should apply.
The second distinguishing factor is how much time the teachers and students of a university spend outside the classroom. In my experience, teachers of private universities have an excellent rapport with their students, which is a direct result of the fact that both the parties speak to each other for quite a bit of time outside the classroom, sometimes for reasons that are unrelated to any course or syllabus.
This, I think, is a positive aspect that helps to develop the students’ communication skills, which students of private universities are usually better at than their public university peers. In comparison, the teachers and students of public universities spend less time interacting with each other outside the classroom.
The third factor that makes public and private universities different from one another is the use of modern technology. Public universities have been known to become averse to using new technology in areas such as publication of results, website content, and use of closed-circuit cameras on the premises.
At the English Department of Dhaka University, for example, all results of semester final exams are posted on one of a number of notice boards, which never fail to attract crowds of students pushing each other for a look at the results.
Private universities, on the other hand, upload not only the exam results to their websites, but also information about individual students and the names of the courses they have registered for. This makes it possible for the students to view their results from wherever they are, using a range of devices, including mobile phones.
There is no doubt that differences like these will continue to exist between public and private universities. But any university, public or private, should make it a point to take any initiative that will lead to the betterment of its students, not only as future employees of different organisations, but also as human beings and good members of society.
