Bangladesh Diploma Engineering Students Teachers Professional Sangram Parishad is observing with great concern and anxiety that the discussion on reducing the duration of the country’s conventional 4-year diploma engineering education course to 3 years in the review meeting of the annual development program of the Technical and Madrasa Education Department in the presence of the Education Minister on March 30 has been followed up in national dailies and reported. This has aggrieved more than 8 lakh diploma engineers and more than 4.5 lakh diploma engineering students of this country. In a joint statement signed by Bangladesh Diploma Engineering Students Teachers Professional Sangram Parishad, Convener Md. Akheruzzaman and Member Secretary Md. Imam Uddin, they called for refraining from such thoughts, mentioning such suicides, a press release said.
The statement mentioned that the Diploma Engineering Education Course was introduced in 1908 as a 3-year course with the aim of creating a mid-level technically skilled workforce in the country. Later, in 1946, the course was upgraded to 4 years in view of technological excellence and workplace. But when the course was converted back to 3 years at a time through the conspiracy of the reactionary technical bureaucracy, the government upgraded the course again to 4 years from the 2001-2002 academic year to meet the needs of the era and global work challenges, and the 4-year course has been successfully running for 26 years.
Considering the technological excellence of the 4th Industrial Revolution, AI, robotics, electronics excellence and domestic and international work, when stakeholders including the Directorate of Technical Education, Bangladesh Technical Education Board, Institution of Diploma Engineers, Bangladesh (IDEB) have been making strong demands for the modernization of the country’s diploma engineering course curriculum, then the technical bureaucracy lurking within the government has brought forward the unreasonable discussion of reducing the duration of the diploma engineering course as a tactic to incite diploma engineers and diploma engineering students against the fascist-free democratic government. The leaders of the Sangram Parishad said that in the past, such conspiracies of the autocratic government have been thwarted many times by diploma engineers and students through repeated movements, and this time too will be no exception. The statement mentioned that such pointless discussions have been brought forward as a tactic to destabilize the new government.
The statement drew the attention of the government’s Ministry of Education to modernize the diploma engineering course curriculum, resolve the existing teacher crisis in polytechnic institutes, fill the shortage of practical raw materials, modernize labs, and increase the duration of the education curriculum to 5 years, considering the needs of the domestic and global job market.
