Buet, CU won’t adopt centralised entry test
The Buet and Chittagong University will not adopt the centralised admission system this year as they have decided to follow the existing admission system to enrol students.
The two universities made the decision at the meetings of their academic council in the last two days.
Speaking to The Daily Star yesterday, Buet academic council member Prof Md Mizanur Rahman said, "The academic council on Wednesday decided that Buet will enrol students through admission tests like it has done over the years."
Without giving a direct answer for the reasons, Mizanur, also the director of Directorate of Students' Welfare at Buet, said they were not against the uniform entrance test system which was introduced by the University Grants Commission (UGC) recently. "But we will follow our own rules for the tests."
According to the current system, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) seeks applications from admission seekers, draws up a shortlist of eligible candidates, holds admission tests and enrol students on the basis of their results.
Meanwhile, the CU authorities said they would observe how the new system styled "Central Admission Test (CAT)" goes on this year before making a decision on whether to adopt it.
At a meeting of the CU academic council yesterday, most of its members agreed on not to go for the CAT after discussing the pros and cons of the new system, an academic council member told this newspaper on condition of anonymity.
Earlier on January 23, the UGC, the statutory apex body for higher education, announced that it would go for a uniform admission test for the 2020-2021 academic year to reduce hassles of the admission seekers.
On February 12, the commission held a meeting with the vice-chancellors of 12 public universities to discuss the new admission system.
At the meeting, UGC Chairman Prof Kazi Shahidullah said the commission would start the work in full swing next month to set the procedures and methods of the admission system.
But, the VCs of Buet, CU, Dhaka University and Jahangirnagar University had said they would inform the UGC about their decisions after discussing the issue at their respective academic councils.
They mentioned that none of the VCs of the four universities, run under the 1973 ordinance, can make a final decision on their own and that's why they wanted to sit with the academic councils.
The UGC asked them to come up with their decisions by February 26.
Dhaka University and Jahangirnagar University are yet to hold the meetings.
There are 39 public universities, which enrol around 65,000 students every year through separate admission tests. Last year, some 9.88 lakh students passed the HSC and its equivalent examinations under the 10 education boards.
For higher education, public universities remain students' top choice. But the number of seats is quite smaller than the number of admission seekers.
The idea of a centralised entrance test has long been in discussion as admission seekers and their guardians face hassles every year when they prepare for admission tests at multiple universities in different parts of the country.
President Abdul Hamid on several occasions asked the VCs of all public universities to introduce a unified admission system to reduce such hassles.
But some top public universities had opposed the idea after it was floated around a decade ago.
One of the reasons behind their opposition was that the implementation of the system would cut the income of the universities and also teachers from the sale of admission forms, invigilation, and checking of answer scripts.