Holding private universities accountable
Some 39 private universities are about to face legal action for failing to shift to their own permanent campuses as per the government-stipulated final deadline of January 31. The legal penalty would also include barring students admission, restricting launch of new curriculum and alerting admission seekers to those universities. Not that the specified universities were not given enough time for relocating to their respective campuses , but many of them failed due to a number of reasons. Failing to procure an appropriate campus facility within the capital city is one of them.
However, the major stakeholders of these universities should have launched their private institutions by keeping that fact on top of all others, since the law clearly suggests that a private university has to shift to its own permanent campus within seven years of its establishment. Also in most cases the efforts for moving to own campuses were not even seriously considered as implementation of many laws remains unexecuted in Bangladesh.
It needs to be mentioned, based on the formulation of the Private University Act in 2010, private universities were given a deadline for the first time to shift to their own campuses by 2012. The second deadline was extended and fixed in 2013, which was later extended further till June, 2015. The last deadline was for January 2017. Repeated failures of these universities to relocate - as per the act - clearly hints at their financial and structural limitations. Moreover, all the 39 of the universities should have foreseen the legal repercussions.
At present, there are 95 private universities in the country and 51 among them had missed the January 31 deadline. Out of the 51, only 12 however, managed to move to their own buildings so far. A coordination meeting is expected to be held between the education ministry and UGC soon to determine the next course of action against private universities that failed to move to permanent campuses within the specified time. We believe, the ministry and the UGC will jointly take whatever legal action is required. Finally, our law enforcement agencies too, should cooperate in order to implement legal actions in this regard.
