Leave our public universities alone

Syed Badrul AhsanSyed Badrul Ahsan
Published : 24 Sept 2016, 04:51 AM
Updated : 24 Sept 2016, 04:51 AM

We have a rather strange situation here. The government has decreed that all public universities from here on must make certain that those intending to teach in them go through written examinations and a viva voce. And that is not all. These young people who make it their objective to take up teaching at the universities as a career will also be subjected to police verification before they can take up their jobs.

It is easy to understand why the authorities are suddenly so sensitive about our universities. The Islamist militants who have infiltrated some educational institutions, especially private universities, have convinced many among us that not just students but their teachers too are involved in this insidious fanatical enterprise. We understand the government's worries. But we also remain aware of the larger truth, which is that one or two teachers are not the entire teaching community; that a few students gone astray and turned killers are no indication that every student we come across is a potential assassin.

Now we are informed from on high that prospective teachers at the public universities must sit for written examinations. The authorities, in conjunction with the University Grants Commission, have made it known that the procedure is mandatory, that one cannot ignore it or skirt around it. Given such circumstances, an unassailable truth now comes up: any young man or woman who wishes to teach at the universities knows that he or she must be in possession of a brilliant academic record if that ambition is to be fulfilled. Indeed, that record is there or else the individual in question would not be thinking of applying for a university job at all. Are we now being told that young people who have achieved wonderful results in their honours and masters courses, perhaps even beyond them, must now sit again to prove whether or not they are qualified to teach the subjects they have so very well graduated in?

You can understand the viva voce aspect of the rules relating to teachers' recruitment. But written examinations for intending teachers? That sounds a little way off the mark. Again, reflect on that police check aspect of the new rules, if and when they are put in place. A Bengali young man who has gone through school and college and university is certainly not one who has questionable loyalty to the state. He does nothing or has done nothing, to use a cliché, subversive of the state. But that police check now threatens to put him at the mercy of officials, to a point where a single negative remark, for no fault of his, could threaten his future – and not just in the academic sense. Shouldn't someone in the corridors of authority be told that employing teachers at universities is not the same as issuing passports to citizens? But, yes, even on this question of passports, all this delay caused by police inquiries ought not to be there. If inquiries are at all necessary for a citizen to be given a passport, let it be facilitated by a reference to his or her local ward commissioner or his or her employer.

But back to that university recruitment question. You have an interesting, indeed intriguing situation here. Clearly someone in the inner sanctum of the government thinks appointing teachers to public universities is the same as or similar to employing people in government through the regular Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) process. There is a difference between the two, which some people are clearly not cognizant of or are ignoring deliberately. Thousands of candidates appear at the BCS examinations, which are public and which therefore make it necessary for written, viva and other modes of examinations to be conducted before final results can be determined. You do not have that picture in the universities, where a tiny handful of people – because not everyone gets a first class – are inclined or motivated to apply for teaching positions. Let us be very clear and very blunt here: men and women who teach or plan to teach at universities have attained a high degree of intellectual eminence in their fields of study. Why must we humiliate them through telling them, in so many words, that their academic results do not matter, that it is their performance in written tests for recruitment that does?

Social progress or national refinement is not always based on formal examinations. We do not expect doctors to be recruited in the many clinics and hospitals around the country through written examinations. They know their subjects. Must they nevertheless prove again, to the powers that be, that they know? Lawyers are not expected to sit again for examinations if they mean to practise in court. Politicians will find it absurd if they are asked to answer questions, on written forms, on their knowledge of politics before they can seek nominations for seats in local bodies or parliament. Will that improbable dawn be upon us someday when senior academics making it to the shortlist for appointment to the office of vice chancellor of a university be then expected to appear at a written test to prove their capability or otherwise of providing leadership to the university?

There are conventions and traditions that have worked all over the world since the dawn of civilization. Written tests for teachers to be appointed at universities are not one of them nor should be. That reality notwithstanding, a government official involved with the university aspect of education has made it known that the process of a written examination for aspiring university teachers is a demand of the times. Who has determined that demand? And who speaks for the times and on what authority?

For such symbols of state authority, we have a simple message:
Let our public universities be – and move on to the more crucial job of enhancing education standards in the country, of freeing this nation of the stranglehold of GPAs and Golden GPAs it has been trapped in for years on end. Move on to the critical task of creating a knowledge-based society, for this nation desperately needs the finest of minds to chart its course to the future.

We rest our case.