How to fix university admission system in Bangladesh

The current state of admission of students in educational institutions of Bangladesh is in a real mess and requires urgent fixing. The chaotic admission system is a nightmare for the students, and more so for their parents/guardians. It has become an unbearable struggle both physical/mental and financial to get a place in a school, college and university. There are many stories of corruptions and nepotism in school/college admissions often involving large amount of donations charged to accept students from wealthy families.

The admission situation in public universities in Bangladesh is more pathetic, complex, and often traumatic for hundreds of thousands of admissions seeking students and their guardians. The story of admissions to medical and engineering colleges and universities is not less painful either. Unfortunately, despite different discussions at different levels, and various trials, the university admission process is yet to be fixed to make it easier and user friendly.

The admission process to universities was not as horrific as it is now until recently. The dramatic increase in the number of universities across the country and the simultaneous rise in the number of students seeking for university places have made the situation worse. Some leading universities are managing their admissions by independent admission tests. Some others are relying on the cluster admission tests. Regardless, the sufferings of the students and parents are still intolerable and unacceptable.

The main problem of admissions to universities is the distrust in the results in the board examinations, both SSC and HSC, due to the alleged manipulations in the exams. They believe that the results of the students completing their high school and college education do not fully reflect their academic quality and level of knowledge. Hence, the universities want to select suitable students for admission based on the results of their own admission tests instead of fully relying on the SSC and HSC exam results.

To solve the admission problems at the tertiary level, the nation must address the problem of cheating in the examinations to assess the quality of the students in the secondary and higher secondary boards. This process should start from the primary level, and the system must ensure that the assessment system at all levels is trustworthy, and the results are not affected by the academic misconduct during the examinations. Once this is achieved, the universities should accept the students based on their exam results or ranking for admission. Realistically speaking, this will not happen overnight, and hence we must have an alternative less painful and hassle-free admission system in place. Until that happens, a reliable admission test is essential and justifiable.

Under the current admission system in Bangladesh, students often need to apply to many universities at a time with a hope to secure at least one place. In the process the universities in the capital city and surrounding areas attract more applications than that of those located in the rural and remote areas. So, students are paying admission test fee to multiple institutions. They also attend tutorial or couching centres for preparation of admission tests. Often there are different specialised coaching centres for students aiming to be admitted to medical and engineering colleges/universities. All these admission test fees, and coaching centre charges add to significant amount of money.

The currently admission process also delays the selection and admission time of students significantly. Students applying to different institutions, require travelling to the different parts of the country to take the admission tests. They also need overnight accommodation for far off places. This is more difficult for the female students. In many cases the parents concerned travel with the students adding to the increased cost and financial burden on the families.

The universities charge large fees for admission test. For some popular universities, the amount of money received as admission test fees is remarkably significant. The arrangement of admission test including physical facilities, managing staff and invigilators is a huge task for the universities. In the process some universities make large sum of money that are shared by the academics and staff concerned.

The uncertainty of securing a university place makes the students and their parents too worried about their future. Because of the time taken for the admission tests at different universities, assessment and publication of results, selection and acceptance process of students and the change of discipline/subject for admission almost all students lose several months of their lives for complicated and lengthy admission process. Many unsuccessful students in securing university places repeat the same painful, expensive and lengthy process in the second time next or following year.

The admission to tertiary institutions is a global phenomenon. Every country has its own system in place for students to be accepted for university programmes. The admission to tertiary institutions in developed countries are very well established and operates smoothly and on time. There is no need for any admission test by individual universities. The students completing college education are placed to university programmes though a central admission system based on the results of their higher secondary assessments. In some countries the admission of university students is managed by an independent private organisation (e.g. in UK), and in other countries government institutions (e.g. in Australia) help admission of students in different tertiary institutions.

In the United Kingdom (UK), Universities and Colleges Admission Service (UCAS) provides ranking of students for university admissions. The UCAS calculates tariff point for each student enrolled in its system, and the universities offer places to the students based on this point.

UCAS was formed in 1992 by merging the Universities Central Council on Admissions (UCCA) and Polytechnics Central Admissions System (PCAS) and the name UCAS is a contraction of the former acronyms UCCA and PCAS. But a fully unified application system for universities and polytechnics was not achieved until 1994.

UCAS Tariff point is a numerical value that represents a student's academic achievements and grades. The value is based on the grade achieved and the size of the qualification. The UCAS Tariff is recognized across the UK and is used to compare students who have studied different types of courses.

As part of the application process students can register for an account with UCAS, include their profile, search for courses, and submit up to five applications at a time. Students can track their applications and receive offers from universities. After receiving offers, students can accept one offer from any university of his or her choice.

In Australia different government bodies manage tertiary admissions in different states. In the state of Queensland, this body is known as Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre (QTAC). Students apply to 17 institutions with 1 QTAC Application. Every Year 12 (that is HSC) students require to create an account in the QTAC Application Portal and submit all relevant documents.

Admission to Australian universities is based on the ranking of the Year 12 graduates known as Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR). Across Australia, the ATAR serves as the primary mechanism for tertiary admissions.

Since 2020, all states in Australia are using the ATAR for university places when Queensland joined rest of the states who had been using it since 2009-2010.

There is a fixed application fee for each applicant registered in QTAC system, and a minimum entry ATAR requirement must be met to be suitable for university admission.

The ATAR is a percentile rank rather than a mark, indicating a student’s position relative to their peers within the same age group for a given year. It provides a standard measure of a student’s overall academic achievement in comparison to other students who may have studied different subject combinations. The ATAR helps tertiary institutions to select applicants for their programmes based on relative position of students.

QTAC places all competing applicants in ‘order of merit’. This means applicants with the highest ATAR score receive the first offer, then applicants with the next highest ATAR score and so on.

By going down the ‘order of merit’, applicants receive offers until all the places are filled. So, the student with higher ATAR will receive offer of admission before those with relatively lower ATAR.

On registration, the Year 12 students list their preferences of programmes along with academic results in their QTAC applications. The system lines up their preferences in light of their ATAR and selection rank to ensure they have a best chance for applying to their desired tertiary education programme.

Thus, by selecting more options students are more likely to obtain an offer from the universities. By selecting more preferences (subjects) on QTAC system, students get more opportunities to choose their future.

Every Australian university decides on the range of ATAR required to be accepted in various programmes it offers every year. So, for a university some programs require higher ATAR than others and vice versa. Universities in higher band set higher ATAR for the acceptance of students. As such, for any specific programme different universities may have different requirement of ATAR.

In search of a suitable integrated university admission system in Bangladesh, we may learn from the experiences of some other countries that are successfully conducting their university admissions. It would be easy to adopt the system in any other country with necessary modifications to meet our local needs and circumstances.

From my long experience with the higher education sector in Canada and Australia, I believe that Bangladesh Government may set up a central tertiary admission management institution, like QTAC in Australia to address the problem of university admissions.

A single admission test for all students willing to start their tertiary education will make the admission process much simpler, less expensive and easy for students and their guardians. This process will save a lot of money and highly valuable time. It will also be helpful for the universities to start their teaching term on time and at the end the students will be able to complete their degrees without unnecessary delay.

Being the top organisation to manage higher education in Bangladesh, the University Grants Commission (UGC) is the right government agency to create a central tertiary admission management system (CTAMS) to prove this much needed support for the nation. All eligible students will open an account in CTAMS and register as candidates for university admission.

An online application platform of CTAMS will collect all academic information of the students along with their preferences (may be up to 6 subjects) of the study programmes of interest.

Until the universities agree to accept the results of the two board examinations due to lack of trust in their assessment quality, a centrally managed single admission test should be arranged by the CTAMS and include the results of this test in ranking the registered students. This admission test may cater for different specialities including engineering and medical education by including discipline specified set of questions. Only students achieving at least 5 CGPA in combined SSC and HSC exams may be allowed for admission test.

The CTAM system will then combine the results of the admission test and the two board examinations with appropriate weighting to determine the final score/rank of the applicants. Once the admission test results are available, CTAM system would calculation the rank score of the students by using 20 per cent weight for SSC exam results, 30 per cent for HSC exam results and 50 per cent for that of the admission test. So, the final ranks of the candidates will be a score out of 100.

Every university will set a minimum rank/score to accept students in any specific discipline or subject. Obviously, this minimum rank requirement will vary from subject to subject with every university. This minimum rank requirement for a specific subject may be different for different universities.

The universities will offer places to the students with required minimum score/ranks in each discipline until their number of places is filled. For the unfilled places, the universities may lower the minimum score requirement to accommodate students with lower scores. Under this system, a student with high score/rank will receive multiple offers of admission and would need to decline the offers that s/he is less interested to free up the places for the next level of students.

No system is foolproof and above criticism. So, the proposed CTAM system may not be perfect for all students and for all universities. But, on the average, it will be able to meet the expectations of most of the students and need of most of the universities in much more fair and equitable way. The actual desired functioning of the proposed system may take some trials or pre-testing before going for full operations.

*Dr Shahjahan Khan is the vice chancellor of the Asian University of Bangladesh, and the emeritus professor of the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. He can be reached at Shahjahan.Khan@unisq.edu.au