Foreign university branches
Yousuf M Islam, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Teaching, Learning Centre, BRAC University
The Daily Star has come a long way in promoting "People's right to know". Still, it must go a long way to attain its goals. I applaud the efforts made by The Daily Star towards promoting good governance. Today's (June 13) report, "Low quality foreign university branches "selling' degrees" is however an example of hearsay journalism. It must be remembered that anything published in print is perceived to be true by the general public.My first question is, has the reporter tested the degrees? Has he actually found out what the institutes are really doing? Let me lay bare some facts as examples: IBCS Primax, for example, has been offering NCC (UK) diploma and degrees since 1992. Seeing the success of graduates and the demand of the local market Daffodil, Neural, Bhuiyan, Soft-Ed and IBIT joined the bandwagon. The graduates from these institutes hold good IT positions and also contribute to outsourcing firms. Many graduates have got a credit transfer to foreign universities, have been accepted by Master's and PhD programmes abroad. To find out the quality of these degrees, the employers of these graduates need to be consulted! What do these institutes of IT do? National Computing Centre of UK has been in existence for over 38 years and has over 250,000 students worldwide. NCC conducts its exams through the British Council in Bangladesh. The exam papers are published and marked in UK and certificates are issued by authorised bodies in the UK. Each year of NCC has a local project component that is moderated by a local and also regional moderator. Regular visits are paid by officials of NCC to check on the local work. The work done by the institutes can be likened to coaching centres - they only prepare the candidates for the professional exams that are conducted at the British Council. These institutes do not claim to be 'universities' - they simply do coaching for the professional qualifications. The government at one point had announced that the market needs 10,000 IT graduates annually to cater to the needs of the local market and the needs of outsourcing companies. How many graduates do the public and the UGC approved private universities produce out of the 10,000 needed? The institutes have actually approached the UGC several times, even invited the immediate past state minister of education to an international NCC conference and submitted papers to the UGC to no avail. To carry on their business of coaching, however, the institutes have valid trade licence and TIN numbers. To send foreign exam fees, the institutes are enlisted with Bangladesh Bank and are allowed by the government to send student fees. Without investigating the contribution that these institutes are making to the IT industry in Bangladesh, and without addressing the repeated pleas for recognition, the UGC has simply declared these institutes as illegal. Without thorough investigation the newspapers are giving lip service to the UGC. As the future of the existing students, the faculty, the administrators of these institutes are all at stake, I urge the authorities concerned to conduct a thorough investigation into all aspects of what these institutes are doing and suggest that The Daily Star arrange a round table to come up with what should be done.
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