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Private universities have been doing moderately well, so far, complementing the higher education level besides the public universities over the last few years. No session jam, non-political and secured environment, moreover easier access to demanding subjects boast the popularity of the private universities.
International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC) Dhaka Campus has been very well admired in recent years for its inexpensive but quality education. The university offers degrees in Business (BBA, MBA), Information and Communication Technology (BSc in Computer Science and Engineering) field.
In the MBA programme offered by the university, almost all the students are engaged with their own businesses or jobs. The students are working in different multinational and local organizations like: Aktel, Singer, Aarong, Standard Charterd Bank, Rahim Afroz, Partex etc. What would MBA add to those who are already doing job? As one student hopes, " With my MBA degree, I hope my salary will be increased at least by 50%."
How are the students performing in the job market? " The feedback from the employers is quite satisfactory. All our graduates are well placed in the job market. When they get MBA degree added to their career, they perform better in their own area," says S Rahman, the MBA programme coordinator. He also says, " For the BBA and MBA programmes, we are trying to follow IBA, IIUM Malaysia and the Harvard University."
As S Rahman says: " In fact, unless you have business studies at some level of your academic career, you will not be confident enough in commercial application of your other knowledge. You think about any profession, engineering, medicine - whatever it be-you need to know the techniques of business to be able to competitively apply your specialization and to derive benefit out of that."
What is special with IIUC Dhaka campus? "We have highly qualified members from the academic field as well as the professional world. We provide free text books for all the students," says Md. Mosharraf Hussain Mridha, Assistant Director of the university.
The university has different campuses for the male and the female students. Students vary in their opinions whether they should have different campus based on gender. "To cope up with the outside world, we need to be smarter, we need to study together," says Md. Rabiul Islam, a student of Computer Science and Engineering. "When it comes to studying in university level, we, male students, should not be separated from the females. We could learn so many things if we have studied together. Problems might be more acute in a viva board, if there are four females and one male — we might feel nervous," says Emdad Hossain, a CSE 8th semester student. Farjana Islam Tina, a BBA student, finds it more comfortable to have separate campus. "Separate campus is better. Our environment is a tutorial one. We feel quite comfortable here. I do agree if we could study with males, our group study practice could have been more comfortable." "As we are not enjoying co-education facilities, we would feel more hesitant to work with our male colleagues," said Sabina Yasmin, a BBA 4th semester student expresses her anxiety.
But what do the guardians think about the separate campus? Many of the female students' guardians feel it is more comfortable to send their daughters to a separate campus for females. As S Rahman, MBA Programme Coordinator, puts it, " Guardians want their daughters read in a safe and secure arrangement."
Probably the dynamism of the university has contributed a lot to the university for being one of the top nine universities in the recent University Grants' Commission Report. With the changes in the outside world, the need for change in the curriculum is obvious and IIUC has been quiet alert in this regard. As prof. Muhammad Loqman, the Chief of Dhaka campus says, " We are redesigning and converting as a practical oriented subject which will give the students sound knowledge and confidence. As a result, they will be ready to meet the global challenges of the business world."
One good thing about the IIUC is that The University deliberately tries to infuse ethics in the students. Beginning from the nomenclature of the university to the course curriculum of various programmes-it is active in pursuit of finest ethics; they even say they are redefining ethics in the light of reality. "You would agree that ethics and Islamic values are synonymous-though unfortunately there is a lot of confusion about this issue. Our university directs considerable efforts in defusing this confusion and for encouragement of application of modern business tools and techniques ethically to ensure collective welfare," says Zakir Hossain, the member-secretary of the MBA Coordination Committee of the university's Dhaka campus.
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