Students who have passed Higher Secondary Certificate and equivalent exams this year will depend more on private educational institutions as the students far outnumber the seats in public universities and students are unwilling to pursue higher education under the National University in colleges.
According to the latest University Grants Commission report that was placed in the parliament this year, 229,491 students can get enrolled in 31 public universities. Eighteen public medical colleges have 2,712 seats and there are 300 seats in three public dental colleges.
A total of 5,74,261 students passed the examinations this year and the figure is higher by 40,892 than the figure of the past year, according to the result published on July 27.
The number of GPA 5 scorers has also increased this year. A total of 39,769, students got GPA 5 this year and the figure is up by 10,765 than the figure of the past year.
Although the number of successful students has increased in recent years, the number of seats in public universities has not increased in accordance with the number of admission seekers.
This seat problem is forcing students to go to private institutions and some private universities are doing business cashing in on the problem.
Fifty-one private universities are in operation in the country and some new universities are waiting for approval.
Many GPA 5 scorers will not get the chance for admission to top public universities such as University of Dhaka, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, University of Rajshahi, University of Chittaogng, Jahangirnagar University, and medical colleges.
In the past year, 30 students contested for a single seat in the University of Dhaka.
The education minister, Nurul Islam Nahid, however, said that there would be no seat crisis.
‘No one will face seat crisis. There are more seats in all universities and colleges than the total number of students who have passed,’ he said at the secretariat on July 27 after announcing the exams results.
Serajul Islam Choudhury, professor emeritus in Dhaka University, said that there could be two solutions of such problems of seats.
He said that the colleges offering higher education having good infrastructure and good teachers could be upgraded into fully-fledged universities.
He also said that it was not possible at this moment to ignore the necessity of private universities. ‘But we should ensure the standards of education in such universities,’ he said.
-With New Age input
