Syed Saad Andaleeb

The Daily Star's February 3rd issue carries a story on page 5 about the acute teacher shortage at Khulna Medical College.

The nation is now in the grips of another approaching election. A flickering hope among many is for an inspirational leadership that energises, enthuses, and leads competently, and with good intentions to touch the lives of the people of Bangladesh.

Once again, a headline in The Daily Star grated: “Fifth-grader 'raped' by headmaster.” Another headline literally stung: “RMG worker gang-raped in moving bus.” Violence against women continues inexorably and with inexplicable regularity, reflecting the unconscionable disregard and disrespect that is held today for the helpless victims. Where does such abjectness come from? Is there something in the male ethos,

Violence against and violation of women result from “some of the worst forms of discrimination” that continue unabated in a variety of ways: mistreatment, harassment, lewd stares, groping, maiming, raping, and even murdering. With choices that matter to women in their hands, men seem to have been endowed with an arcane sense of entitlement to do as they wish with the lives of women.

Winter is a great time for the replenishment of academia in Bangladesh when many Non-Resident Bangladeshi (NRB) academics alight on our shores for both personal and professional reasons.

Here is an example of an organisation that benefitted substantially from research: Courtyard by Marriott found out that business travellers needed hassle-free service, relevant information, and time to relax during their travels. They made their check-in and check-out procedures efficient; seeded their website with maps, restaurant types and locations, and promotional materials; and introduced quiet lounges which didn't have music or TV noise to cause distraction. I don't need to elaborate on Marriott's customer satisfaction ratings or their bottom line!

With every new discovery, we enter a new realm of knowledge that quickly reveals our inadequacies and how much more we need to know.

Of the 30 million youth between the ages of 18 and 25 in Bangladesh, roughly three million go on to pursue higher education.

In an editorial I wrote in the Journal of Bangladesh Studies in 2003, I had noted a perplexing and worrisome situation in Bangladesh's academic institutions, both public and private – lack of a research culture.

I recently went to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a city hospital. One of my students at BRACUniversity suffered a serious brain injury

Much has been written about the monumental traffic jams that literally inflict physical, psychological, economic and emotional trauma

Recently I heard a rather bewildering story on teaching in higher education. Taught to depict a triangle as ABC, a student wrote PQR

The abuse of our streets seems to have reached monstrous proportions. At the root of it all is a phenomenally growing aura of indiscipline that borders on the unbearable and challenges one's physical, emotional, and even financial endurance.

The role of research is indispensable for the advancement of any society, especially because things around us are constantly changing.

HAVING had the occasion to be on the 12th floor of an apartment building in Dhaka, I was taken in by the panorama that was both breathtaking and dispiriting.

THERE is a perplexing problem in Bangladesh's “universities,” especially in the private universities. A significant number of departments of these universities are staffed by faculty members who are of very senior rank (professors).