Role of Higher Education With Special Reference to Grading Schemes in Universities.

8/9/2019 Role of Higher Education With Special Reference to Grading Schemes in Universities.

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Knowledge based society: role of higher education with special reference to

grading schemes in universities.

Recently there are talks of building a knowledge based society (KBS) in Bangladesh.

This paper wants to discuss this issue from certain perspectives such as what we mean

by such a term KBS and what is expected of us to move in that direction and what role

universities can play to accelerate the process.

Knowledge is defined as “information and understanding about a subject which a

person has or which all people have.” What is information? Information about some

thing is actually the facts of all varieties relating a subject. For example, let us take the

case of ploughing land for cultivation. Traditional knowledge was to use a wooden

plough with a metallic pointed head to dig and turn the soil when dragged by a pair of

cow attached with the yoke linked with the plough. This knowledge and practice of

tilling the soil continued in Bangladesh for hundreds of years till the slow introduction

of power tillers and tractors in some places during the last two decades. Now days you

will hardly see the traditional ploughing of land in the northern areas of Bangladesh.

What has changed is the application of new technology (knowledge) instead of old

technology. Why farmers have been changing from the old to the new method of

ploughing, the short answer is that the new method is more efficient (low cost per unit

of tilling). The similar evidence of changing dimension of knowledge can be observed

in many other spheres of human activities such as transport( buses and trucks in place

of bullock and horse driven carts), power based irrigation equipments in place of oldmanual methods), use of HYV seeds and chemical fertilizers to increase yield per unit.

The benefit for this change in farming knowledge can be seen in trebling of grain

production since 1972 while population has doubled during the same period. The rate

of growth of population has been brought down again by the application new

knowledge of contraceptives and medical interventions. Therefore the statement to

have a knowledge based society is somewhat misleading. At any point of time people

are using available knowledge to perform certain functions better. What is intended

from the desire to have knowledge based society is perhaps to increase the rate of

change in the field of technology and use newer knowledge that people in other parts of

the world is using and to produce those newer technologies by the people of our

country. If we take a stock of the techs that are being used in the country from land andmobile phones to textile machineries we will see that we do not produce may be not

more than 10% of the new technologies. RMG the largest industry in terms of

employment and export earnings perhaps do not add more than 25% value added after

20 years of rapid growth. Sustainable growth requires that we gradually produce more

and more of the equipment and other inputs within the country and reduce our

dependence on import from other countries. We are using millions of computers and

mobile phone sets in Bangladesh. To get full advantage of these digital technologies in

terms of increased employment and lowering costs we must start assembling them in

Bangladesh. Why we are slow in moving in this direction is perhaps due to

shortcomings in our education system that is not offering required skills (knowledge) in

related fields besides the political uncertainly.



The second lacking in our transition to KBS is the minimal interconnection between

our major production activities and our education system. Not only that we do not

provide knowledge to our students in schools and colleges about our major industriessuch as agriculture, our education system has not seen the application of new

knowledge in terms of teaching -learning methods. The traditional mode of rot

memorizing the contents of a subject is still prevalent and some the more useful

knowledge supporting subjects such as English language and mathematics are not

taught at required levels. Completing education through rot memorizing is wasteful

because after some time it is forgotten in most cases and the student may be left with

some vague idea. Instead if a student did a critical analysis as to why and how and for

what, that would increase the capacity of his brain to relate with current and future

activities and new knowledge in the subject. This is the most serious defects in our

education system all through its stream from primary to university levels. This has been

recently pointed out by Prof. Yunus as failing to think “out of the box”. Another Nobel

Prize winning economist, J Stiglitz also wrote on investment in education: “It opens up

minds to the notion that change is possible. That there are other ways of organizing

production, as it teaches the basic principles of modern science and the elements of

analytical reasoning and enhances the capability of to learn.”. He also quoted from

Amartya Sen, another Nobel laureate economist who “ emphasized the enhanced

capabilities that education brings, and the resulting freedom that development brings to

individuals.” Reflecting on the rot memorizing that education in Bangladesh mainly

offers there are lots of changes that must be made to make it suitable for the 21 st

century as one can easily imagine. Such changes also may not be enough in a highly

competitive world as described below.

We should not only strive to be a KBS because it is not sufficient to compete in the

global economy. Our education system not only encourages rot memorizing it also does

not ask for putting max effort to achieve the highest level attainable in a subject. We

are still carrying the legacy of the British introduced system to offer limited education

to few people to work mostly as clerks and support staff in administration. The

awarding of classes, first, second and third, based on 60%, 45% and 33% marks

obtained in public examinations gives an indication that candidates were not expected

to achieve the highest levels after lots of efforts. This needs to be examined in view of

the new knowledge available from the field of psychology that found the “anchoring

effect” in decision making by people (Kahneman, HBS, Noble Prize winner ineconomics). In a classic study on the subject the researchers asked participants to

estimate the percentage of African countries in the UN. Before answering the question

they had to spin a wheel with numbers ranging from zero to 100 and indicate whether

that number was higher or lower than the percentage of African countries in the UN.

The wheel was rigged to stop at either 10 or 65. This was not known to the participants.

On average participants with a 10 on the wheel gave an estimate of 25 per cent; those

who got 65 estimated 45%. The conclusion was that they had taken their cue from the

exercise of spinning the wheel although the numbers on the wheel were irrelevant. So

anchoring or targeting higher levels seems to affect individual decision making on the

level of efforts to be put in studies.



Many of us can recollect how we used that 60% as benchmark for first class in

preparing for public examinations mostly by memorizing answers to a set of expected

questions (8-10) that were repeated in some sequence year after year from a givensyllabus in a subject. Was it like that a student who covered and learned 60% of the

materials would get a first class and so on? What would be the level of his efforts in

attaining that 60% marks? Certainly it was not the highest level as we can all remember

from our own cases in the past. It seems there was not an urge to create conditions for a

student to put his maximum efforts in studies as it was not demanded by the system.

How do you explain the classification system that used to prevail here until recent

changes to letter grades A+, A etc. IBA Dhaka University has been using the letter

grading system since the start of MBA program in 1966. Statistics of those graduated

from IBA about 50% failed in the program unlike other university departments where

passing rates above 95%. Graduates from IBA will vouch for the level of their efforts

they put to get higher grades in courses. One can guess why IBA graduates excelled in

their jobs and moved into higher level position in many fields in Bangladesh. It seems

achievement motivation induced in a in a good school, such as IBA, has had links with

job performance in real lives. Records shows that about 50% of the students admitted at

IBA fail to graduate although they are selected from a large pool of candidates through

a rigorous admission tests.

In this connection one of the researcher on language and history, Dr. Monsur Musa

(former DG of Bangla Academy) said in recent seminar on language day why the

British did not establish many universities in India. He said that after America became

independent in 1776, the then prime minister announced in the parliament that they lostAmerica because they established many high class universities there that spearheaded

movement for freedom. That universities create awareness among the people of the

need for freedom is clearly understood by us from the role played by Dhaka University

established in 1921 by the British. Dhaka University was called as the giver of freedom

to the Bangladeshi people described by a noted scholar, Dr. Serajul Islam Chaudhury,

professor English of Dhaka University.

The Americans did away with the British classification in education long time back and

introduced the grading system that require much higher level of efforts to achieve

higher grades. The assumption that underlie the grading system is that a candidate will

put his maximum effort to obtain say for example A+ (marks 90 and above) in a coursein which the margin of error is left at maximum of 10% or less. That means the

candidate has learnt to apply the knowledge correctly 90% of the time. This has

important implication for performance on the job in whatever field he or she may be

engaged. For those obtaining lower grades, B, C, and D the margin of error in learning

and hence applying the knowledge in practice is likely to be higher. In this connection

it may be mentioned that in 2006 UGC recommended a grading system for all

universities in Bangladesh giving A+ for obtaining 80% and above marks and it was

reported in the press that only one out of 79/80 Vice-Chancellors raised objection on

the decision. Currently most of the private universities are using a grading scheme in

which A+ is awarded to those getting 90% and above marks and UGC is insisting on

the use of their recommended scheme. Grading schemes are not popularity contests as



they have serious consequences for national economic growth and they should be based

on scientific knowledge.

To make our executives sound decision makers they must have educational background

with high achievement motivation and less susceptible to margin of errors. It may not

be out of place to conjecture why our executives in the public sectors are slow and less

effective decision makers. Neither the politicians who rule the country nor the

executives who run administration on their behalf have high achievement motivation

ingrained in their mind set as most of them have had mediocre performance in their

education backgrounds. Obtaining first classes with 60% marks and those with second

classes with 45% marks can not be expected to be high achievers. In university

teaching jobs these days four such first classes are preferred not required. And given

the corruption being reported in the universities in Bangladesh the rot has gone too

deep to change in the near future. Seeds of fast growth in the all fields of human

endeavor are laid in their educational system and there is merit in trying to follow the

American system since we want to move to a knowledge based and achievement

oriented society. Huge investment is needed to change the culture of our education

system to make it suitable for educating the future generation of executives and leaders

to be high achievers. The private universities have started to move in that direction

through the application of letter grading system of American standards. It is not under

stood why the UGC is bent upon giving A+ at 80% marks? Have they taken any clue

from behavioral sciences, such as the effect of anchoring on human behaviour and

decision making that follows from that? Before such changes are imposed UGC should

have done some research on the science of evaluation of students’ performance andtheir motivation to excel in later lives.

.

References;

1. The Readers Digest and the Economist on Kahneman’s work.

2. Making Globalisation work, J.E Stiglitz, Norton, 2006.

3. The Daily Star, 17th Anniversary Issue, March 2008.

4. UGC Reports and letters.

Role of Higher Education With Special Reference to Grading Schemes in Universities.

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