Shawdesh desk:

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has taken hard line on updating the curriculum of the private universities with an aim to ensure time-befitting quality higher education in the country.

The UGC on April 6 sent a letter, signed by its Director Md Omar Faruque, to the registrars of all the private universities, asking them to update their curriculum and send it to the university regulatory body by June 30 for approval.

The UGC has decided to suspend enrolment of the students in the private universities for different programmes unless they send updated curriculum to it by June.

UGC sources said there are rules for updating the curriculum of programmes of the private university after every four years, but most of the universities do not want to do it on various excuses.

In the letter, they UGC asked the private universities to update curriculum and send it   as per the Outcome Based Education (OBE) template by the deadline.

“If the curriculum of the ongoing programmes of the universities is not sent to the UGC by June 30, enrollment of new students for those programmes will have to be stopped,” said the letter

The UGC in recent times has been laying emphasis on the formulation and implementation of the OBE curriculum by the private universities to ensure quality of higher education.

The university regularity body has also sent letters several times to the private universities in this regard, sources concerned said.

Apart from giving guidelines, the UGC has also been organising training in OBE curriculum for university teachers. Different universities are also holding workshops on the OBE curriculum on their own.

The UGC has prepared a template for all the private universities for formulating OBE curriculum. The OBE template was approved at the 157th meeting of the UGC held on February 6 last year.

At that time, an expert committee was formed to make suggestions on how to make the template more accurate and its evaluation part more effective.

Later, the expert committee finalised the revised version and evaluation part of the OBE template for the private universities of the country.

UGC Director (private university division) Md Omar Faruque said many private universities have updated the curriculum and also sent it to the commission for approval as per the guidelines.

However, some private universities have updated the curriculum of some programems but updating of some other programmes is still pending, he added

He further said, “We are getting good response from the universities. Hopefully, those who haven’t yet sent the updated curriculum will get it done as soon as possible.”

Officials concerned said at first the universities have to apply for syllabus approval or updates through a specific process to the UGC. Then the UGC’s private university division will give approval through experts concerned.

The private universities have to pay fees fixed by the UGC to complete the syllabus approval or update process.

The universities have to pay fees of Tk 50,000 to get approval of curriculum for undergraduate and postgraduate level for the science, technology and engineering faculty while Tk 40,000 for Business administration faculty, Tk 25000 for Arts and social science faculty and Tk 30,000 for other programmes.

Apart from this, the private universities have to pay fees of Tk 20,000 for updated curriculum for Diploma or Postgraduate Diploma (six months to one year).

Besides, in the process of approving the syllabus of 3-6 month certificate course, the universities have to pay a fee of Tk 15,000 while the amount of fees will be half during updating of the curriculum.

However, private university authorities say that since OBE is a new method in Bangladesh, it will take some more time to complete the curriculum updating process.

Eastern University Vice-Chancellor Prof Shahid Akhtar Hossain said the initiative to ensure OBE curriculum and semester system at the universities is admirable and necessary.

“The progress to formulate OBE curriculum in our university is good, but I think the deadline of updating the curriculum should be extended until December considering all the universities.”