<i>Destructive campus politics </i>

Quality of education at public universities compared to the international educational standard has fallen alarmingly. We are way behind in all fields of education compared to our next-door neighbour India. We do not have enough natural resources to sustain a growing population. Our only hope for the future is our bright, innovative and intelligent population resource.
God has given us a population resource having an enormous potential. If properly trained in an environment conducive to learning, they can quickly learn any new technology. Unfortunately, our public universities were used by politicians to achieve their own selfish goals. Our highly educated public university professors, once they earn their PhD, give up learning and become terminally educated. They fall into the traps of the politicians. They give up their pursuit of knowledge and scholarly activities and get into the shadow of politics. They find out that getting involved in the right kind of politics and making right connections, they can advance their career. They don't feel obliged to improve themselves professionally and become outdated in their field. Unfortunately, we do not have a fair evaluation in place to evaluate our teachers' quality and their professional development. Their teaching load is light compared to the western universities. In the USA a four-year (BS degree) university teacher delivers 3 lectures and 2-3 lab classes every semester. They are evaluated by their students every semester and by their peers every academic year. They have to keep updating their knowledge base to keep their job going. To get their job permanent (tenured) they have to publish scholarly materials (original publications) in a peer reviewed journal. There is check and balance, so that students can obtain quality education. Our public university professors are not accountable for their professional activities. They have plenty of free time to meddle in politics and extract political favour from the parties. Since the teachers are not teaching seriously, students are not getting the full benefit of their learning experience. Nowhere in the world students are so directly involved in politics. This is the right moment to bring about a fundamental reform in the higher education system of Bangladesh. The whole education system needs an urgent overhauling, so that we can shape and mould our human resources to meet the challenging future of tough competition. To make our public universities a healthy place for higher learning and to build our future generations, we must prohibit teachers' and students' politics on the campuses.
I have a great hope that once we rid our campuses of clumsy, destructive politics, our universities will produce the best and the brightest minds of South Asia.