Guideline needed to appoint VCs: UGC Chairman
There should be a guideline for appointing vice-chancellors to public universities to reduce political manoeuvring in the appointment process, opined University Grants Commission Chairman Prof Kazi Shahidullah.
The candidates should have strong academic credentials and administrative acumen for becoming VCs. Besides, a VC should be appointed for one term only to reduce "politicking", he proposed.
"There should be no scope for someone to raise questions about the academic excellence of the VC of a public university," Prof Shahidullah told The Daily Star.
Currently, there is no guideline in place that can determine who is eligible or disqualified to be the vice-chancellor of a public university.
"In our country, in good faith, it is assumed that anybody who is a professor, theoretically, becomes eligible to be appointed as a VC," he said.
The UGC chairman also said that a person aged at least 52 years and experienced at least for 10 years should be appointed as VC.
Until now, respective laws of four large public universities—Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong and Jahangirnagar universities—have provisions that VCs of these universities would be appointed by the President after getting elected by the senate of the respective universities.
But, in most cases, un-elected VCs run the universities. Currently, VCs of RU and CU are not elected.
However, there is no criteria for the appointment of VCs in other universities.
As per the rules of those universities, the President holds the jurisdiction to appoint a VC, but he does so following the consent of the prime minister after the Education Ministry sends a list of potential candidates.
The UGC prepared a Strategic Plan for Higher Education for 2006 to 2026 which recommended that the existing system of appointing VCs needed to be changed, as it left much "scope for political manoeuvring'.
The chancellor could form a national search committee, giving it adequate legal backing to recommend the appointment of VCs, it proposed.
The BNP government at the time did not implement any of the recommendations choosing, instead, to appoint loyalists.
"If someone can fulfil the criteria like having sound academic track, 25 years of teaching and administrative experience, it would reduce the chance of politicisation," Shahidullah said.
"I don't see a problem if political connection can play a 20 percent role," he added.
Shahidullah said a search committee on many occasions does bring desired results, but then the question arises, who are the members of the committee and are they independent.
Regarding the corruption allegations against VCs, Shahidullah said that UGC had probed different allegations charges against 13-14 VCs in recent years.
In many cases, the allegations hardly had substances, he claimed.
"We have probed and in some cases forwarded the report to the education ministry. They are supposed to take actions," he said.
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