Perceptions of autonomy, academic freedom, and accountability on university governance in Bangladesh

Abstract

Perceptions of Autonomy, Academic Freedom, and Accountability on University Governance in Bangladesh

Submitted by Md. Monjur - e - Khoda Tarafdar for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in October 2018

Perceptions change over time. Changing perceptions of autonomy, academic freedom, and accountability considerably impact on the governance of higher education and its institutions. This study explores how perceptions of autonomy, academic freedom, and accountability trigger their influence on university governance in Bangladesh over the last four decades negatively. It finds that Bangladesh public university governance is infringed, despite given autonomy and academic freedom. Universities have a myriad of dependent and multi-dimensional interrelationships amongst the constituencies including state, government, academics, student, and other stakeholders. University governance becomes problematic through the perceptive changes of the concepts of autonomy, academic freedom, and accountability by these constituencies. Moreover, the paradox of politicization and depoliticization coincidentally becomes the cause of such perceptive shifts, with misperception and misappropriation of authorities. Bangladesh's public university governance has been dangerously affected as a fait accompli. This qualitative study examines three public universities to explore contemporary perception phenomena of the core values of autonomy, academic freedom, and accountability. The research question is how perceptions of autonomy, academic freedom and accountability have impacted university governance in Bangladesh? It engages in qualitative multiple case studies with an ethnographic modality to fit the research question to capture the perceived impact on the governance of three public universities. It uses open-ended in-depth interviews of 74 informants including academics, administrators, policymakers and civil society members to inquire about the cases against a backdrop of a highly politicized environment for public universities. This study reveals that rivalling political agenda on campuses affects academic engagement. The involvement of the academe in state politics is understood as a tool for securing state power. The collusive partnership amongst government, leaders of the university academics and students has caused severe infringements in the university governance. Autonomy, academic freedom, and accountability have been misperceived and have marginalized academics in the case-study universities, which suffer from losing democratic values, ignoring collegiality, oppressing voices and contracting freedom of speech. The hyperactive political environment on the campuses leads to irresponsible governance and affects university education seriously in Bangladesh. This thesis argues that if accountability works amongst those who exercise powers in governing universities, the situation would have been different. (355 words)