The economy has grown 5-6% over the past few years despite inefficient state-owned enterprises, delays in exploiting natural gas resources, insufficient power supplies, and slow implementation of economic reforms. Bangladesh remains a poor, overpopulated, and inefficiently-governed nation. Although more than half of GDP is generated through the service sector, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single-most-important product. Garment exports and remittances from Bangladeshis working overseas, mainly in the Middle East and East Asia, fuel economic growth.

Monday, August 14, 2006

What’s happening and not happening in BUET?

What’s happening and not happening in BUET?
By GM Solaiman
August 14, 2006

We all know that authorities of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) announced the university closed sine die following a violent student movement demanding deferment of examinations. Following that, lot of discussion is going on in all sorts of BUET student and alumni forums all over the world. Here are some points that I believe worth our consideration.

1. Some argue that BUET academic system need to be changed. We need more distribution of marks that reflects in the final grade. Final exam have too much emphasis. It should not be more than 50%. Not that I disagree. But did you remember those all time super heroes in BUET? You know the famous “class test andolon” warriors? How about that? How much time buet students lost for that? BUET teachers knew this long ago but THEY did not let that happen. THEY were proud of that. And oh yeah, we (means you & me) awarded them few seats in BUET “chatra songshod” for that. Did not we? Where are those heroes now? I believe some of them are actually in USA. Let’s draw a line from Silicon Valley to Austin and make them do a nake-khoth? Shouldn’t we? How about those teachers who were making every effort to make them & us understand? Should we make those HEROES eat the shoes of the teachers? I hope that some teachers are saving one of their old shoes for this very occasion. THIS needs to be done FIRST before we go to the teachers and ask for diversify the grade.

2. You think all this is happens because we have 70-80% mark on final exam and BUET student chicken out. That’s funny. There was three months between the end of class and exam date. That was not enough? You guys are right; we must change lot of things in BUET administration. I mean, who admitted these morons in the first place? In my opinion this problem has nothing to do with 70-80% mark on final exam. I don’t go to school anymore, but my wife does. She never had a concept of PL here. She got two 50% weight final exams in the same day, back-to-back or 2 hour apart most of the time. That gives you 50%+50% i.e. 100%. And oh yes, finals are on full syllabus of the class materials. They just had to obey the teachers & school administration. They never thought of an “andolon”. Her American classmates are not as democratic as BUET students are. Are you saying she is far more smatter than me? She will be flattered though. But all those students in USA school are smarter than BUET students? Students all over the world are smarter? Only we are stupid, hah?

4. If you are in Rome, do what Romans do. Well I am in USA. While attending school in USA, I knew and accept that I am in the class room for one and only one reason: get education. All my white, African American, Hispanic who are American citizen were there for the same reason. So I did what American did, which was get my study. American student were not there to change university policy, fix school exam schedule, decide or stop when the next batch of new student should be admitted. Me neither. Hello?? Are those students in BUET trying to be more Christian than Jesus himself? May be my American classmates need to go visit BUET to learn "Democracy". I recently read some students response in Protom-Alo newspaper. They said that they had to do it to stop authority’s decision of admitting a new batch in next semester. Why that is concern of students? That’s none of your business. Students have no business on deciding this. If you like to influence those kind of decision, you batter finish your study as early as possible. Then join BUET as a teacher, get into the decision making body. Who will make decision in a democratic society? Is it some democratic institute and entity with ability and responsibility or is it some kids with stone in their hand? We invested heavily to some how build a democratic society. But did we forget to tell these kids the definition of democracy? As a student in USA, we never have been in decision making of University. Why we should be in BUET?

5. BUET semesters; why can’t they be like any other world class university? Why can’t we have academic year 2006 exam in calendar year 2006? Why can’t we have one semester final in May and the other one in December? You know, like any other University in the world. Final exam of 1992-93 held in 1996? I must be a genius. Otherwise how could I explain this fact? What exactly happened in your country that make your academic calendar screwed for three years?

6. Some argue that BUET is not a distant island. BUET will go the same way education system in Bangladesh go. Well did you ever see that SSC exam of 2005 happened in 2006? How about HSC exam? How come we are okay to complete all the class 1-10 final exam by end of December and start new class in January? Are we were outside of Bangladesh all these time. Suddenly, once we get admission in BUET, we enter in Bangladesh? One current student told me “Hey we never knew that class could be skipped by taking so called auto vacation. We never knew that the final exam date could be changed by mass movement. Who teaches us this? BUET teaches us this, isn’t it?” Well, good argument. But the point is that one batch made a mistake does not mean others have to repeat that mistake over and over. It needs to end, and NOW.

7. How can you explain some students hit and injured a teacher’s wife? How can you explain some students climb up to 4th floor in the teacher residence, kick and slammed the door, and call words like “haramzada”? No jobs after graduation, not enough TA, too much pressure in final exam, father kicked you out home, GF didn’t let you do it, Kala Farooq eloped with your mom, what else? Nothing, NOTHING is enough of a cause. This is beyond any imagination. THIS IS THE PROBLEM. We need to solve this, otherwise all bets are off.

8. If BUET authority punishes those who are responsible to those: Will we the Alumni stand farm on that decision? Will we be able to avoid dividing in party line and start criticizing them depending who is in power at that time? Will the current students be wise, and avoid having more loss of time & money with another andolon for reverting that decision?

9. “Campus a police keno, kortipokkh jobab chai”. I don’t know students use this phrase or not, now a days. But I was used a lot when I was a student. This resonated in the response of few students in prothom-alo. They said they only broke some glasses in cafeteria. And then police attack the students with no notice. They also said, VC will have to pay the price for using police. Let me tell you a story. I was doing my MS then. We lived in an apartment just attached to campus. One day, one of my friends wife, a neighbor, was listening to music, may be with little loud volume. Next thing you know, police is knocking her door. Her husband was not at home, and she was crying. She (and we all) had no idea that police can come for this. Or police can come inside a campus in the first place. Later we found that city police department actually put a police station in the campus. Police car are visible in the campus road most of the time. Mostly they trying to catch you in fault and give you driving ticket. So she had to obey the policeman. All of us, the students were stood there; think how different things are hear. Back home, police in our campus? Our BUET? Oh boy. “Jan-ta hate nia ashte hoito”. Does USA have democracy? Is it really the free world?

10. In my opinion, diversifying marks too much is risky for BUET. We do not have infrastructure to support that. Hiring lots of TA will not solve the problem, rather make it worst. Girls (and boys of BUET) are behaving badly even with teachers. What about TA? Good luck on that. Beside, in BUET we are hiring fresh bachelors as teachers and give them lots of classes. They are in no way capable of handling USA style full control over grade distribution. It will leads to a complete disaster. In USA style teaching strategy, syllabus only has an outline and teacher decides what to teach, how he divides the total mark, how the final grade is calculated, when will be the mid term exam, when will be the final exams, even a final exam is required at all or not. Sometimes they make the final exam optional. But to get to that level, all the teachers have to be either has a PhD or pursuing their PhD with few exceptions. BUET is no way close to that yet. Well, having said that, I believe this is where BUET Alumni can lend a hand. You guys need to go back to BUET and teach. I am sure BUET can make to the top 500 lists very easily. Give it a thought.

11. If we have teachers with PhD, than sure, in that case, we can hire graduate student as TA. Note that this TAs will have higher qualification than the fresh undergraduate that we are hiring today. Huge emphasis in the final exam is the only way BUET can survive without ex-faculty coming back with higher degree. (I know the reason & background behind that, but let’s not go there). Well may be we can have a similar style midterm exam. But than again PL for the midterm, movement for extension, oh boy, thing could get ugly down there. We don’t need to solve world’s problem in a school picnic. I am proud with the BUET standard and never felt that I wasn’t ready for higher education with the knowledge that I got from BUET. I like to congratulate our ex and current teachers and authority for maintaining the standard on final grades that a students receive from BUET with very little resource and experience. I am not saying that we should not change the academic system in BUET. In fact, I am for the change. But we need to evaluate the environment carefully and change such a way that we have infrastructure to support and sustain the changes.
And before making any rule, we need to find people who will obey that rule. That is true for any rule. If you not going to obey it, why bother making it? Change is an ongoing process. We always have to make change for making existing things batter. It will never be perfect, and it is okay to have dissatisfaction. But that does not mean we will disobey what ever there is and broke down every thing. There will be a proper way to make changes. There will be a proper responsible entity to make change. That will be part of already existing system. Without that proper channel
(way+entity), rest of the system must follow & obey the existing system. Breaking it will only make your progress slower.

12. You have to listen, in order to speak and expect that other will listen to you. When you are a leader, go ahead and lead. When you are not a leader, follow your leader. If you are in a deciding body, go ahead and decide. If you are not in a deciding body, accept the decision. It is okay to disagree. It is part of democracy. But there is a thing call “disagree and commit”. You express your disagreement with the decision, but than you accept the decision. Chaotic behavior and bring down the system attitude will only destroy what ever you already have. This is not specific to
BUET though. As a nation, we have this problem like cancer. You have to keep the cycle running, it will purify itself one step at a time. You have to keep the system standing, and use only the proper channel to make changes that will make it batter. It will not happen overnight. All the people will not be changed at a time. But it need to be started at some time, someone need to start it. Why can’t that be now? Why can’t that be BUET? After all, we BUET alumni think, we are the best of the best in Bangladesh. BUET is the top educational institute in Bangladesh. So why can’t BUET start it today, and rest of Bangladesh will follow it tomorrow? Am I shooting it too high?

posted by x86 @ 4:50 PM

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