Though the government, after returning to the power, has been emphasising on ‘digitalisation’ of education system especially the higher education segment of the country, but the authorities of public universities, the country’s largest component of higher education, have hardly any impression in this regard.
The fact was revealed after visiting the very worn out websites of the public universities, most of those were branded as the advanced institutions of the country.
There were some universities whose websites are still under construction though years have passed after their establishment. Websites of the major universities, with some exceptions, were updated once in a blue moon.
As a result, reputation of renowned universities of the country is being perished day by day in the international arena where websites were often considered as the key source of getting assumption of an organisation.
For just not having a rich and updated website, Bangladeshi universities are staying at the bottom of international ranking every year. For the same reason, foreign students are losing their interest from the Bangladeshi public universities.
According to a recent survey, no Bangladeshi university was in the list of top 1000 university of the world in online publications.
In the list, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) was the top Bangladeshi university holding the 2,916th position. Dhaka University (DU), the pioneering public university of the country, was in the 5,531st position in the list. The position of DU was 4,922nd in the same survey last year. The same scenario was seen in other rankings done previously.
Educationists thought that poor websites of these universities were prime responsible for that.
Despite questions, there were a number of research works done in every year by the faculties of Dhaka University but those were totally absent in its website.
Besides, the Dhaka University has some 36 separate research centers like Bureau of Economic Research, Bureau of Business Research, Bose chair for Adv Studies and Res in Natural Science, Centre for Advanced Studies and Research in Biological Sciences, Dev Centre of Philosophical Research, Renewable Energy Research Centre etc and those were mentioned in its website. But when visiting those links no description of their research works were found without a paragraph on the center’s establishment history.
The website of Dhaka University is ‘univdhaka.edu’ where there so many blank pages would be found. Lots of necessary information were missed in the website even contact details of many well-known departments was not given there.
There was no direction for international students. The most interesting matter is that there was nothing but an article on the ‘history of DU’ got place in the page named ‘International Students’. There were many other mismatches in the DU website.
The same or worse condition was seen in the websites of major public universities like Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) Jahangirnagar University (JU), Chttagong University (CU), Rajshahi University (RU) and Jagannath University (JnU).
Websites of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), Comilla University, Patuakhali Science and Technology University, Sylhet Agriculture University are under construction though years have passed after their establishment.
When visiting, websites of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Medical University and the Bangladesh Agricultural University were found blocked.
Talking on the issue, prominent educationist Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal told the New Nation “Unfortunately our public universities are still in the sideline in taking benefits of modern technologies. But it should not be longer to keep cop with the advanced world,” he added.
Prof Iqbal said since there was a great significance of websites in the international ranking of universities and to attract the foreign students, so the authorities should be aware of it.
He emphasised the need for developing online libraries in the universities as the students can easily get modern knowledges.
