The Bangladesh Today - 17-07-10

Looming admission crisis

A serious crisis is likely to creep up over the admission of the students, who have passed the HSC, Alim and HSC in Business Management examinations this year, to higher educational institutions due to shortage of seats in degree colleges, medical colleges and different private and public universities. Besides the universities, an alarming situation is likely to arise in the premier colleges in cities where many brilliant students are unlikely to get admission due to shortage of seats.

 
According to the BANBAIS, there are about 3 lac seats for the students in the country's degree colleges, medical colleges and public and private universities. The number of students who have passed HSC and equivalent examinations this year from ten education boards is 5,33,369 including 28,671 GPA-5 holders. Thus the number of successful students this year exceeds the seats by over two lakh.

Worse still, about five thousand GPA-5 holders are likely to be deprived of entrance to the university of their choice as 28,671 students have secured GPA-5 while the number of seats in the public universities is 24 thousands. However, there is scope for admission of 2410 students to Medical Colleges. There are only 1,86,000 seats in the honours classes of the colleges under the National University. As a result, many of the successful students will not be able to get admitted to the colleges affiliated to the National University.

 
On the other hand, there is another problem relating to admission to the universities in the cities specially Dhaka. Most of the brilliant students who fared well in the examination are interested in getting themselves admitted to the reputed universities in the capital and other cities. But the number of seats there is too small to accommodate them all. So, hundreds of meritorious students including GPA-5 holders are sure to be deprived of the opportunity of admission to the institutions of their choice. In the capital, there will be a heavy rush of brilliant students from all over the country for admission to reputed universities like Dhaka University, BUET, Dhaka Medical College and Salimullah Medical College. For this situation, students and their guardians face an uncertain future in respect of admission to premier institutions of higher education.

In short, a serious uncertainty looms large over the future educational career of many students who came out successful in this year's Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and equivalent examinations as adequate number of seats are not available there in the educational institutions at the higher level to accommodate them. It is really painful to learn that thousands of this year's successful HSC level examinees may be deprived of entrance to universities and colleges due to shortage of seats there. They may have to face this unfortunate reality for no fault of their own.

 
The grim reality is that many students who have passed HSC level examinations this year face an uncertain situation in respect of admission to institutions of higher education. This sort of problem arises every year but unfortunately nothing tangible is done by the authorities to resolve the crisis. It is really painful to learn that a large number of this year's successful HSC level examinees may be deprived of entrance to higher level educational institutions due to shortage of seats there.

 
If the students want to pursue higher education, it is the state's moral obligation to make the arrangements. As this is a chronic problem, the government should set up more educational institutions at higher level and until that can be done double shifts can be introduced in the existing educational institutions to accommodate enhanced number of students there. The present government has decided to establish three public universities. In this way some more educational institutions may be set up to ease the crisis permanently. Meanwhile, the colleges having honours courses and the public and private universities should increase immediately the number of their seats to accommodate more students.

Source : http://www.thebangladeshtoday.com/editorial.htm