Weighing the ‘why’ behind education

I once faced a question from someone I would have never imagined it to come from. It was a humid afternoon and we had assembled under the large banyan tree on the green
30 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Violence-Free Campus: Universities must get back control of their halls

In the aftermath of Abrar Fahad’s murder in a BCL “torture cell” at the Sher-e-Bangla Hall of Buet, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina directed all the educational institutions to look into their student dormitories to find out if there are similar torture cells there as well.
22 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Abrar’s death: The inevitable outcome of a series of unfortunate events

As straightforward as it may seem, the death of Abrar Fahad raises deeper questions about our society as a whole. While it may be looked at simply as the latest violent by-product of campus-based politics,
19 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Politics of Exploitation

On October 11, the Buet VC announced that student and teacher politics would be banned at the university.
17 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Freedom Under Siege

In the light of recent events, to think that we can freely speak our minds would be a grave mistake. Abrar, a sophomore at Buet, was beaten to death by some BCL students. His last Facebook post had been a brief commentary on the river distribution crisis developing between Bangladesh and India.
12 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Abrar murder and campus violence

Abrar Fahad was made to pay the ultimate penalty for sharing his thoughts. In a Facebook update posted on the eve of his brutal killing Abrar critiqued some of the recently concluded agreements between Bangladesh and India on the use of Mongla port, water sharing and gas export.
10 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Publish or Perish

In academia, the maxim “publish or perish” is nothing new. Genetically, the phrase refers to the pressure in academia to continually publish academic research papers to sustain and advance one’s career.
8 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Why are children walking away from government schools?

Most of South Asia (with the exception of Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka) is not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal education target of equitable, inclusive, quality primary and secondary education for all children by 2030.
7 October 2019, 18:00 PM

Innovation in education and the changing nature of our world

The importance of creativity and innovation for the sustainable development of a society is widely recognised today.
6 October 2019, 18:00 PM

What’s wrong with our university admins?

The last few weeks have been marked by a torrent of revelations about cases of corruption, irregularities and complete subservience to the establishment in the country’s higher education institutions.
26 September 2019, 18:00 PM

Recognising an innovative education model

The Yidan Prize 2019 (for education) is the latest of many global awards and recognitions earned by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, the founder of Brac, for his lifelong contribution to education and development in Bangladesh and 10 other countries, from Afghanistan to Uganda.
22 September 2019, 18:00 PM

What’s stopping students with disabilities from pursuing education?

Many of us are probably not aware of the condition known in medical science as cerebral palsy, which affects a child’s muscle tone, movement, and motor skills.
22 September 2019, 18:00 PM

Listening to Student Voices

Academic programmes across the world are becoming increasingly innovative, competitive and challenging. They are responding to changing times. There is also the realisation that, built in the right spirit, universities can generate enormous social capital and rich economic dividends.
18 September 2019, 18:00 PM

Achieving universal literacy status: How far have we progressed?

Right after the country’s independence, when the literacy rate in the country was 16.8 percent (according to UNICEF), a group of young people in Kochubari-Krishtopur, a village of Thakurgaon, started a movement to make all the villagers literate.
12 September 2019, 18:00 PM

A clarion call for education in Rohingya refugee camps

Two years after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees started arriving in the Cox’s Bazar district of south-eastern Bangladesh, the need for services remains dire.
15 August 2019, 18:00 PM

Transforming education, transforming youth

Around the world, August 12 is celebrated as the International Youth Day. This year’s theme, “Transforming Education”, highlights efforts to make education more relevant, equitable and inclusive for all youth, including efforts by youth themselves.
10 August 2019, 18:00 PM

Nationalising educational institutions: Opportunity or threat?

Since indepen-dence, a unique policy initiative in Bangladesh has been to nationalise non-government schools or colleges or madrasas.
1 August 2019, 18:00 PM

Why do the best minds of public universities perform so poorly in research?

After I joined a leading private university in 2015, a question that puzzled me was why so many public university teachers are teaching at private universities.
22 July 2019, 18:00 PM

Case for a critical review of our education

This write-up comes on the heels of a recently-concluded international conference hosted by the Bureau of Economic Research and the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka. Amongst the many issues that were discussed on the pathways to achieve inclusive
19 July 2019, 18:00 PM

Skills learning changes lives and must be lifelong

Today, there are 1.2 billion young people aged between 15-24 years—almost a fifth of the world’s population.
14 July 2019, 18:00 PM