Manipulation of the University Act
MANIPULATION of laws or Acts for one's own interest has become very common in Bangladesh. Even in the Parliament we have experienced that several successive governments have made amendments to various laws for serving their own interests. If we think about bureaucracy we would find that laws have permitted bureaucrats to use discretionary power. Like many other organizations, authorities of public universities in Bangladesh have manipulated the University Act of 1973 form time to time. Sometimes erroneous elucidation of different clauses of the Act was given only to offer gratuitous privileges to the teachers loyal to authorities.
Since I am a faculty of university, I would try to shed light on some provisions of the 1973 Act and try to explore how these provisions have been manipulated for personal gains. Due to scarcity of spaces, attention would be concentrated on few issues.
First of all, to be considered for appointment to the post of a lecturer, candidates must have Master's degree with at least one first class either at the Honours or at the Post Graduate level. A candidate with a third class in any of the degrees may be eligible for appointment as a Lecturer, if he/she has a PhD degree. There is another provision that if suitable candidates are not found, any of the qualifications may be relaxed. Several successive administrations have manipulated this clause for appointing candidates loyal to them. A good number of teachers have managed to get selection without having one first class either at the graduation or master level which is really unfortunate. In most cases, these candidates have PhD without having first class in either of the higher degrees. This is really a serious manipulation of the Act. Main intention behind is to provide undue privilege to the candidates having strong political allegiance.
Second issue which is also an important one is the exemption of the service experience during promotion. The Act provides that any university teacher may be eligible for getting exemption of one year service experience at any level of promotion (during becoming associate professor or professor) if he/she has five publications which are of international standard. The provision suggests that for getting exemption, one must have publication in international abstracting journals or refereed journals. However, this provision has not been applied in letter and spirit. Since names of the journals are not specified, nobody knows what does it mean by international standard? For instance, there is Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for social sciences and Science Citation Index (SCI) for sciences. There are a large number of journals which are included in these lists. Journals included have world wide recognition as international journals. When a teacher gets one year exemption during promotion only on merits of publication, quality of his/her publication should be judged properly.
As far my knowledge goes, I did not find any administration who had put their efforts to ensure quality of the publications. In stead, every administration has given promotion to the teachers ignoring quality of their publication. Numbers of article have gained paramount importance without considering their quality. Such manipulation is a serious offence. They could have amended the clause by incorporating few names of the journals that are listed in SSCI or SCI or any others.
Another issue that deserves mention is the provision of auto permanent in temporary posts which has been done by the immediate past administration. University Act provides that any teaching staff serving in temporary post must have to apply in advertised post for the purpose of making his/her job permanent. However, the immediate past administration passed an act in the syndicate which refers that any teaching staff serving in a temporary post may be eligible for permanent position if s/he completes two years of service and if his/her application is recommended by the departmental planning committee. Such provision is contrary to the 1973 University Act. It is obvious that such step was politically motivated.
Universities can play an important role in nation building since they produce qualified graduates who represent the country in the world. Thus universities should be handled more carefully. It is a matter of great regret that politics play the most dominant role in the academia. As a result of political domination quality of education has gone down which can be substantiated by the Dhaka University's position in the lists of world's top universities. It is really unfortunate for us that we do not have any of our university listed even within 4000 top universities of the world.
Under such circumstances, the government should take necessary action to ensure quality of education in the public universities. The university authority should consider the fact that university is a place to exercise academic excellence in stead of exercising of politics. Of course, there should be exercise of politics but not at the cost of quality of education. We have now got new administration at Rajshahi University. We expect that they would take into account of above clauses and take necessary initiative to stop manipulation of those provisions. Only then, the university would proceed towards right direction.
Dr. Pranab Kumar Panday is Associate Professor and Chairman, Department of Public Administration, University of Rajshahi.
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