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DU running too many evening programmes

Students, teachers fear of falling education quality

UNB, Dhaka
What began in 2001 as an evening course under Dhaka University's (DU) business studies faculty for developing skills of professionals, has witnessed an exponential growth over the past 17 years.
DU now offers dozens of evening postgraduate, certificate, diploma and other professional courses, at times jeopardising its core and regular academic activities. Currently, as many as 40
departments and institutions of the university are running such evening courses, while more are in the offing.
Such phenomenal growth in mostly short-term evening courses is now testing the capacity of the university, as DU is running short of additional human resources to run so many evening programmes.
Noting that a large number of evening courses is hampering regular academic activities of DU,
many studies and teachers fear that unless the situation is brought under control, the university's regular academic curriculum will be compromised.
The DU authorities first approved evening master's courses of business faculty in October2001, when Vice Chancellor Prof Dr AK Azad Chowdhury was at the helm of the affairs.
The logic employed to rationalise the move was to spread
higher education among professionals to enrich their knowledge and skills. But now many criticise that evening courses have become moneymaking ventures for some teachers and officials.
At a meeting of the DU Senate last year, DU treasurer Prof Kamal Uddin criticised evening courses, saying, "In the name of evening course, many public universities including DU are producing underqualified graduates."
"A section of teachers of our university are playing an active role in introducing and continuing this below-standard evening courses for their personal benefits. But they should keep it in mind that university is not a money-making machine," he said.
They are also hampering the image of Dhaka University through the evening courses and pushing regular students into challenges in the job market, he had alleged in June last year.
Questionable admission process and
inappropriate answer script evaluation are producing low-quality graduates tarnishing the image of the university. There is no official difference between these low-quality evening master’s graduates and regular students, as the certificates and mark sheets of both are the same.
DU Vice Chancellor Prof Md Akhtaruzzaman admitted that the quality of evening master's graduates and regular students are not same.
He said, "We know that this system has some lacking. But we are trying to promote this system and take it under a proper process so that we can secure quality education and ensure world class graduates."
The 40 departments and institutions of DU running evening courses now include: Management, Accounting and Information System, Marketing, Finance, Banking and Insurance, Management and Information System, International Business, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Organization Strategy and Leadership, Television, Film and Photography Studies, Printing and Publication Studies, Japanese Studies, Criminology, Public Administration, Development Studies,
Political Science, International Relations, Nuclear Engineering, Communication Disorder, Geography and Environment, Oceanography and Clinical Psychology departments, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Institute of Energy, Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies, Institute of Social Welfare and Research, Institute of Health Economics, Institute of Education and Research and Confucius Institute.
DU Pro-Vice Chancellor Prof Mohammad Samad said, "We must maintain the proper quality of education. Maintaining quality is equally important for regular and evening or professionals courses."
Some student leaders also have critical
views about DU running so many evening courses.
Bangladesh Chhatra League DU unit's former general secretary Motahar Hossain Prince said, "For these evening courses, regular students' studies are being hampered, as the teachers are giving more efforts in professional courses. They also face identity crisis in the job market as evening course students get same certificates as them."
DU unit Chhatra Union President Foez Ullah said, "These types of professional programmes never suit DU tradition and character. Teachers are serving in exchange for money, and earning money becomes the main factor here."