Vice-Chancellor of United International University Professor Dr. M. Rezwan Khan provides insights on the tertiary education sector of Bangladesh with its prospects, challenges and potentials.
Q: At the very beginning please tell us about your early life and how you got into this profession.
Professor Dr. M. Rezwan Khan: I was born and brought up in Dhaka. I had my schooling at Dhaka Govt. Laboratory High School. After that, I got my HSC degree from Dhaka College. I completed my graduation from BUET in electrical engineering. Right after my graduation, I joined there as a lecturer in the Dept. of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (EEE) in 1980. In 1982, I went to London University College in the UK and returned in 1986 after completing my master’s and Ph.D. After returning, I resumed my teaching career. I joined United International University in 2004.
Q: Currently we often hear people saying that the public university students are better than the private university students. You have good experience in both the fields. What is your opinion regarding this?
MRK: Well, it depends. Usually, the best students get admitted to BUET and the University of Dhaka. So it’s expected that their average student quality will also be better. Also, the tuition fees over there are pretty low. Very often we see very talented students in many not-so-well-off families. They cannot get into private institutions unless they get a scholarship. So we see that some public universities have better student quality than private universities. But this is not applicable to all public universities.
Q: The number of private universities is very high these days. But all of them does not provide quality education. Do you think this is a reason behind the overall degradation of average student quality?
MRK: Actually, if you say that the number of private universities is high, then you are not completely right. Currently, there are about 2.5 lakhs students studying in private universities. The public universities take another 1 lakh. But each year about 10 lakhs students complete HSC. So in comparison, the number of private universities is not so high. I also see people raising questions regarding the quality of education in private universities. But, do they ever raise questions regarding the quality of education of the public universities? Currently, there are about 30 public universities in the country. Among them, some are performing very well. Many of them maintain a very poor quality. There are a lot of public universities where an assistant professor is the head of a department, they lack sufficient teachers and facilities. We are far better in comparison.
So if we raise the question of the quality of education, we will see that standard deviation is high in both the public and private universities. I think that there are a lot of good private universities as well as public ones.
At UIU, we take very good care of the students and we try to develop them properly. Over here, the main thing to consider is, what the universities are offering. For example, we have a career counseling center where our students are offered good advice regarding their choice of career path. So you can’t define quality in a single sentence. It depends on a number of parameters. Then again, there are a number of private universities where the system is very corrupted. They do not maintain the quality of their education and you can even buy your certificate from them. The government should take proper steps against them. So there are both sides of the same coin. We should not blame blindly without justification. This only harms the industry.
Q: We know there are some limitations regarding the campus and establishment of the private universities. How does this affect the quality of education?
MRK: Well, we can never deny the impact of a proper campus on the quality of education. But that can’t be the sole criteria. There are a lot of private universities that haven’t moved to their own campus but are not considered a good universities. Whereas, there are a lot of private universities that don’t have their own campus but are considered as a good universities. Actually, quality should be judged using two factors. Firstly, the physical facilities that the university is providing. Obviously, if the institution does not have a proper campus, it’s hard to provide those physical facilities. But more importantly, the second factor is the quality of education – what is the quality of your recruited faculty, how fairly they judge the students, do they have quota for admission, do the board members admit and qualify students with their influence — all these factors make up to the overall quality of education. So to me, ultimately, physical facilities are sort of a helping hand when it comes to the quality of the university. The main thing to judge is by the quality of education provided.
Q: In our previous editions, we have taken interviews of the top industrialists in our country. We asked them about the problem they face during recruitment. Most of them pointed out that although the applicants have very high CGPA from reputed institutions, almost all of them lack good presentation and communication skills. They also pointed out that, they give very little effort for self-development. They face a lot of challenges in their jobs. How do you see this?
MRK: Yes, I admit that we have some weaknesses in this sector. Let me share my experience. The truth is, we cannot train our students according to our expectations. The main reason is, the standard of our SSC and HSC has degraded greatly. After 12 years of schooling, we naturally expect that the students will acquire a minimum level of skill in mathematics, English, or communication. We don’t get that at all. Not only that. Even the grading system is questionable. For example, I have two GPA 5.00 holders – one of them is very good in quality and the other is not even close to the first one. How is this possible? Yes, there can be some differences, but in practical situations, they differ greatly. Now, when we start with them, we fall under tremendous pressure. How will I grade them? They can’t deliver well in the exam hall, is very weak in communication, and can’t perform well in the classes. In this situation, there are a number of universities that are compelled to compromise. If we don’t compromise, 80% of students won’t pass. This is a very big problem in case of the private universities. But the positive side is that the private institutions are trying their best to improve the quality of education. They are more accountable to the guardians, they are more accountable to the teachers. But the problem is still at the root. A student can get 2 or 3 courses of English in their university. Now if he didn’t do much in 12 years, what he will achieve in 4? Also, most of the students from the top-notch public universities lack greatly in communication skills – they can’t even talk properly. On the contrary, we try to groom our students so they can acquire good presentation skills. But they sometimes lack proper knowledge.
As I mentioned earlier, there are both sides of the coin. As long as we are not able to improve the quality of education in schools and colleges, the universities won’t be able to do much. In the classroom, we see students suffer even with basic English and mathematics – how will we grade them? I think we should address this as a national problem and look for the solution rather than judging which university is better. The thing is, if you can’t build a proper knowledge base in 12 years, the university can’t do much in 4 years.
Q: We see that when a student gets admitted, they fall in a huge pressure to maintain their CGPA. So we see a group of students who focus on extra-curricular activities to enrich their skills and at the same time maintain a balanced CGPA. Another group of students focus only on the CGPA and leaves all the extra-curricular skills. Now a days, the job market is very competitive and the students need to balance both in their academic records as well as extra-curricular skills. What is your advice in this regard?
MRK: This is a very important aspect. As you said, if you have poor communication skills, you will surely suffer in your career in spite of having a good CGPA. We try to deliver this message to the students.
If they have good communication skills, they should also develop a minimum level of analytical skills and improve in extra-curricular activities, CGPA will be an automatic consequence. It’s a very wrong concept to think that CGPA is everything. But we are bound in this case. If a student, not having overall skills, studies hard for the exam, and delivers well in the examination hall, we are bound to give him good grades. Because this is how the evaluation system works. But we try our best to encourage them to take part in different programs. We arrange different types of programs in the university premises, so that they excel in leadership, learn to take responsibilities, develop team spirit, learn to tackle a problem, and learn to communicate. All of the private universities arrange these sorts of programs. The students need to participate in these programs and develop themselves. The fact that a good CGPA holder is not necessarily a good communicator is internationally accepted. That’s why we try our best to arrange these development programs as much as possible. Now, we can’t make this mandatory. So we are trying our best to motivate them in this regard. At the entrance of my office, you might have noticed a poster that states where our ex-students are currently working. This acts as a motivator to the current students. We have two sections to help the students in their endeavor towards self-development. One is the Director of Students Affairs. They arrange various cultural co-curricular activities. The other one is Career Counseling Center. They continuously arrange all the development courses like leadership courses, communication courses, and different skill development programs. We put a lot of effort into these and feel that they are really important for the growth of our students.
Q: In Bangladesh, the students study the books of international writers. So naturally they learn to deal with cases which are applicable for those respective countries. As a result, we get a complaint from fresh job holders that they are having a hard time dealing with issues which are exclusive for our locality. How would you address this problem? If our faculties wrote localized versions of the books, wouldn’t it be helpful for Bangladeshi students to cope with this problem?
MRK: According to my opinion, books can’t solve this problem. If we do not teach from these international books, we won’t get any international recognition. So from this point of view, we need to teach from those international books.
It’s the responsibility of the faculty who is teaching in the class. We always encourage them to cite extra examples. If the book mentions a case study regarding McDonald’s, we encourage the teacher to state the condition and action of Star Kebab under the situation. We tell them to point out the difference and the reason behind it, which are the elements responsible for success over here and over there.
We can’t leave the international aspects altogether. We also can’t ignore the localized solutions. So we encourage the teachers to maintain a balance between these two. Academic issues are always judged by evaluating the books that the students have read. That’s why we need to stick to the books of international writers. But at the same time, the students need to work in the local job market mainly to learn how to implement this knowledge in solving real-life problems from a local perspective. That’s why the teachers need to train the students regarding this matter also.
Q: As we are on the topic of faculties, we see that the private universities are in a very competitive situation. Do you think that you have enough faculties who able to carry out the required qualities to maintain a standard quality of education?
MRK: Getting a faculty with all the required qualities is extremely difficult. We are very choosy in the case of selecting faculties. Whenever we publish a circular for faculty recruitment and take interviews, we get a lot of applicants with previous teaching experience in various universities. We also get fresh graduates. But we can hardly recruit any of them. There is a huge lack of quality faculty in Bangladesh. Also, there is not enough training facility for the improvement of their quality. The government is lagging in this sector. They are also not giving facilities to the private universities so that they may provide Ph.D. degrees. I have a lot of renowned faculties who can’t guide for Ph.D. Ph.D. is a rigorous training program and it’s required to train a qualified faculty. There are only a few institutions offering PhD to a very little number of applicants. The expected time to complete the degree is also very long. We can’t develop top-notch faculty in this way.
Q: As our last question, I would like to ask about the overall condition of the private university sector. After so many years of experience, how far have this sector come and what are the potentials for growth and contribution?
MRK: Before there were private universities, a lot of students used to go abroad for studies. The biggest contribution of the private university sector is in this regard. According to our estimate, when we started our journey 10 years back, we used to lose foreign currency of 1500 crore BDT each year. If the private universities had not contributed to this sector, it would have crossed 5000 crores by now. During that time, around 50 thousand students studied in private universities. But now the number has raised up to 2.5 lakhs. If 1 lakh students of these went abroad and spent 1 lakh per year, you yourself can calculate the loss of foreign currency. Also, there is a matter of cultural gap. A lot of students would go abroad and lose track and ultimately become a failure. But the guardian can now safeguard the students from this as they live nearby. At the next stage of development, we need to move on to research. Currently, all the private universities are actually undergraduate teaching universities. We need to broaden the horizon and open up room for research and development.
