tion has also significantly expanded. Our public institutions, therefore, still remain an indispensable part of our educational system.

The public universities still retain scholars of enormous dedication and high professional esteem. The bulk of the student population aspire to nothing more than a good education. Unfortunately, the quality of learning in our public institutions, at various levels, continues to depreciate. There are many reasons for this, but an important factor owes to the hazard that the campus in these institutions remains hostage to a small yet politically powerful minority who are hostile to the very ethos of higher learning. We are, thus, witness to university teachers being murdered on campus with fellow teachers and student leaders being instrumental in the commission of such unthinkable crimes.

The growing partisanization of our public campuses, over the life of successive regimes, has promoted the debasement of our educational institutions. This tendency has devalued the importance of scholarship as the route to advancement and elevated political loyalty into the prevailing dynamic of upward mobility. As we have recently observed, to even challenge this process is to put your life at risk. In such a system, the quality of education has become the principal casualty in our public institutions with the added hazard to personal security and the perpetual risk of delays in completing a degree.

The future of a whole generation is now being put at risk, which may have ominous consequences for the nation. Since public higher education remains the main source of recruitment into the public service, if we cannot reverse this systemic decay we may be inflicting irreversible damage to the institutions of governance and the eventual sustainability of our development performance. As a result, in a fast globalizing world, where knowledge is becoming the most valuable source of capital, our capacity to remain internationally competitive is being compromised.

It is the paramount responsibility not just of the government of the day, but all the political parties, all parents, all members of civil society to make a supreme collective effort to reverse this tragic situation in the institutions to which we owe so much and which were once the pride and joy of generations of Bangladeshis. Institutions such as Dhaka University are part of the history of Bangladesh and were the cradle of our educated elite. We all owe an incalculable debt to our public universities for making us what we are today. We owe it to ourselves as much as to Bangladesh to pledge ourselves to redeem this debt.

To the best of my knowledge, private university campuses are spared terrorism, indiscipline and the parochialism which has debilitated our once famous public institutions of learning. However, Bangladesh cannot do without its public institutions, and will in the foreseeable future continue to depend on them to accommodate the majority of students seeking higher education.

The graduates of our public universities will continue to influence the quality of governance in Bangladesh for many years to come. Our state of governance will, in turn, affect the quality of everyone's lives and the effectiveness of the private institutions. The regeneration of our public institutions is therefore everyone's concern. Please keep in mind that the person who may represent you tomorrow in parliament, the bureaucrat from whom you will seek redress for some problem, the SP who will be responsible for the security of your neighbourhood, even the doctor who may one day have to save your life, are all likely to be graduates of a public university.

Rehman Sobhan is Chairman, Centre for Policy Dialogue. This piece is part one of a two-part series based on the address he gave at East-West University's 2006 convocation.