পাবলিক বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের আবাসন নিয়ে NEW AGE এর প্রতিবেদন............ Acute crisis of residential facilities at universities January 24, 2015 Mohiuddin Alamgir Public universities cannot provide residential facilities to seven out of ten students, forcing them to live outside the campuses spending more money. This increases their educational expenses, causes economic hardship and affects their academic activities. The University Gants Commission statistics show that while the number of students increases substantially each year at the public universities, accommodation facilities at the residential halls remain static. About 64 per cent students of public universities, excluding National University (NU) and Open University (OU), had no accommodation facilities in 2009 which slid down to 69 per cent in 2013. Number of students in 2009 was 1.66 lakh which increased to 2.10 lakh in 32 universities, excluding NU and OU, according to UGC annual report of 2009 and the latest ones. Huge gap between the availability of seats and the total students, is giving opportunity to ruling party backed students organisations to make the general students hostages and compel them to join political activities in favor of their organisation in exchange of seats, observed university teachers. The UGC chair, AK Azad Chowdhury, said that such an acute accommodation crisis was hampering academic activities and urged the government to mitigate the sufferings of the students by building halls on public-private partnership schemes. ‘We had observed that on some occasions seat allocation at hall was not merit-based… universities should address the issue,’ he said. UGC annual reports said that in 2013 about 69 per cent of 2.10 lakh students were out of accommodation facilities, in 2012, 68 per cent of 1.98 lakh students, in 2011, 55 per cent of 1.86 lakh students, in 2010, 66 per cent of 1.79 lakh students and in 2009, 64 per cent of 1.66 lakh students were out of accommodation facilities. Beside NU and OU, there were 32 universities in 2013, 2012 and 2011 and 29 universities in 2010 and 2009. Students of thee universities — Jagannath University in Dhaka, Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur, and Barisal University — suffer most as the universities do not have any accommodation facilities for students, according to the UGC 2013 report that came out on January 9. Besides, 96 per cent students of Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University in Mymensing, 95 per cent student of Bangladesh University of Professionals, and 90 per cent of Pabna University of Science and Technology did not get residence facilities. Number of students getting residential facilities in many occasions is nearly double the accommodation capacity. As a result of that a good number of students are compelled to share their single bed with another student at the dormitories. Students are also living crammed in rooms, verandahs and games rooms due to shortage of accommodation in almost all dormitories. Students who do not get seats in university halls live in ‘messes,’ which are rented houses outside the campuses, and face difficulties for lack of water, transport and security. They also said that female students were the worst sufferers of the severe accommodation crisis as house owners were often not willing to rent out houses to girls. There is also lack of security for the female students living in private accommodation outside the campuses. Farzana Rahman, a student of Dhaka University, said that she lived outside the campus at Azimpur. ‘Our studies are seriously hampered as we need to cook meals three times a day and we have the hassle of commuting to the campaus, ’ she said. Students complained about a common problem that they were virtually left with no money after paying much higher amount in rent for private accommodation and the cost of food and transport. ‘Only a small amount of money is left after paying the house rent, food charges, tuition fees and fares for transport,’ said Jahid Hosaain, a Jagannath University student living in old Dhaka. Authorities of major educational institutions say that they did not have enough funds to build new halls required to accommodate rising number of students and called on the government to pay due attention to address the problem. Inadequate budgetary allocation for the education sector in the national budget is mainly blamed for the residential crisis at the public universities. Due to poor budgetary allocation, the public universities are failing to provide necessary facilities for the students. Budgetary allocation for higher education should be increased, said professor Ruhul Amin, president of Association of Universities of Bangladesh, a platform of vice-chancellors of public universities. - See more at: newagebd.net/88756/acute-crisis-of-residential-facilities-at-universities/#sthash.J5WQellV.dpuf newagebd.net/88756/acute-crisis-of-residential-facilities-at-universities/
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 15:21:57 +0000