NSU finds inconsistencies in Private University Rankings 2017

North South University authorities have pointed out a number of inconsistencies, which they have described as “innocent mistakes”, in the ranking of private universities of Bangladesh, which was recently done by the English daily Dhaka Tribune.

The first ever privately run university of the country, set up in 1992, came second in the ranking released on Nov 10.

Vice-Chancellor of the university Prof Atiqul Islam has claimed that researchers took information from the University Grants Commission that dates back to 2014 and did not consider the recent achievements made by the university.

BRAC University has topped the ‘Dhaka Tribune-Bangla Tribune Private University Rankings 2017’ which has placed Independent University Bangladesh or IUB in the third position.

Org-Quest Research Limited has conducted the research on behalf of the two news organisations.

During a media briefing on Sunday, Prof Sharif Nurul Ahkam, Director of the Office of Graduate Studies at NSU, said: “Our faculty-student ratio is 1:15. BRAC University got 15 points with a ratio of 1:11 but we got 9.22.”

“If you consider qualification of teachers, their ability to communicate with students, problem-solving skills of the students and their overall quality, we have aced,” he said. “Why will you drag us down only because of faculty-student ratio?”

“The ranking mentions that NSU spends Tk 5.4 million on research and BRAC University spends nearly Tk 40 million on the same.

“But we do have many more researches going on with foreign aids which we did not include in our data given to UGC back then,” he went on.

“So BRAC University got five out of five on this and we got 0.23. They did not even care to recheck after seeing such a stark difference.”

VC Atiqul Islam claimed the ranking ignored myriad of library facilities like e-books and virtual library provided by NSU.

The research has been done on old data, he claimed and said: “BRAC is way ahead in conceptual survey by students, teachers and general people. But they used data of 2014 to do the information-based scoring.”

“We have progressed at a tremendous rate in recent times but those information are absent there.”

“We believe these are innocent mistake, not corruption. Such mistakes sometimes lead to huge losses,” Prof Atik said in reply to a question.

When asked if the recent incidents of NSU students getting involved with militancy had influenced the survey in any way, he said: “We would have lagged behind in the conceptual survey had that been the case.”