Shahin Akhter
Over 27,000 GPA 5 achievers in this year’s HSC and equivalent examinations cannot be admitted to the public universities due to fewer seats.
A total of 92,595 examinees secured GPA 5 out of total 10,67,852 passed in the Higher Secondary Certificate examinations this year.
But there are around 65,400 seats at the public universities and the government medical colleges of the country.
Against the backdrop, senior educationists said that new approaches like encouraging students in technical education are necessary.
UGC member professor Muhammed Alamgir told New Age that in the public universities now there are around 60,000 seats which are not enough to enrol all GPA 5 achievers.
Meanwhile as per the latest 48th Annual Report of the University Grants Commission in 2021, the number of seats for the first-year honours admission seekers is 57,099 in 47 public universities.
Recently, the Directorate General of Health Education increased the seats in the public medical colleges to 5,380.
Professor Muhammed Alamgir also said that the public universities should ditch the ward quota for fair competition.
‘Admission in the universities should be competitive,’ he said, adding, ‘the university teachers and employees are getting all facilities then why their children will get the quota?’
He also said that everyone needs not higher education as there are other opportunities too.
‘If the colleges admit less number of students then along with quality of education the number of students passing HSC exams would be reduced,’ he added.
The Dhaka University Institute of Education and Research professor M Tariq Ahsan, also a member of the National Curriculum Development and Revision Core Committee, also said that all do not need to pursue higher education.
‘The pressure on the higher education level can be reduced by transferring the demand to the technical education like other developed countries,’ he said.
Tariq Ahsan continued that under the existing national curriculum, the HSC and equivalent exams were focused on eliminating students but not to find out their future interests.
Currently many countries introduced different types of university degrees to facilitate the students which should be followed by Bangladesh also, he added.
Apart from the public universities and medical colleges, there are over eight lakh seats for the first-year students under the National University and around two lakhs seats for the students at the private universities and private medical colleges.
