Private university fees

It is possible that some of the private universities have engaged foreign faculty members and a high percentage of PhD holders on their teaching staff, so that their overall costs can be higher, but there is also an element of missionary zeal and social commitment that ought to go with such an enterprise and help strike a balance between costs and services.

There are more than four dozen private universities and if one were to do the averaging of the fees across the board it would strike one as being pretty high by Bangladesh standards. Besides, barring a notable few, most of the universities are hardly offering anything more than routine courses. That is why people in general tend to believe that the tuition fees are not compatible with the overall academic standard in most of the universities.

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In the none-too-distant past there was a row over some private universities running without the minimum facilities required for setting up a university. But some private institutions, particularly the ones which have succeeded in attracting a good number of students, continue to raise tuition and other fees, though the facilities offered by them are not increasing correspondingly.

The government will be well advised, therefore, to be immediately taking up the matter with the university boards with a view to arriving at a rational basis for determining the fees within a framework of rules.