The academic activities of Rajshahi College, one of the largest seats of learning in the north, are being seriously hampered for acute shortage of teacher, classroom, accommodation, transport and others necessary inputs.
Official sources said the college has only 120 teachers to conduct the academic activities of more than 25 thousand students in higher secondary certificate, degree (pass), honours and master’s courses.
The college needs at least 100 more teachers, including lecturers, associate professors and professors, to run the regular educational activities of the college, the sources said.
Apart from the teacher crisis, the public college also faces classroom shortage, with only 35 classrooms for such a big number of students.
The Bangla, philosophy, Arabic literature, Islamic studies, Urdu, accounting and management departments do not have any specific classrooms of their own.
Sometimes the students cannot attend their classes for shortage of classrooms, the students alleged, demanding at least 60 more classrooms to run the classes smoothly.
The classroom crisis is so acute that the college authorities have to suspend all classes during any examination, they said.
Shafiqul Islam, student of accounting department, told New Age that their department has no fixed classroom and they attend classes when other departments do not have classes.
Punam Bin Razzak, second year student of sociology department, said 250 students are admitted to the department every year.
‘But the classroom can accommodate only 100 students at a time,’ she added.
There is no seminar room for any department of the college though the authorities realise Tk 300 from each student for seminar room, the students alleged.
The college is also facing serious accommodation problem, with only four halls which can accommodate only 1,000 students.
Most of the students reside in private hostels and very often miss classes as the authorities cannot provide adequate transport facilities for them.
The college has only four buses and hires three busses while the students have demanded at least five more busses.
The college principal, Professor Ali Reza Abdul Mohammad Majid, told New Age that he had written several times to the education ministry about the various problems the college was facing, including teacher and classroom shortage.
The college has adequate land for construction of new academic buildings but they had no fund to build new buildings, he informed.
The college was established at the centre of the Rajshahi city in 1873 with only six students and the college was upgraded in 1878 with BA courses.
