Faruk Hossain, JU

Jahangirnagar University on Saturday approved its annual budget of Tk 318.44 crore for the fiscal year 2024-25, keeping a small fund for research and education.

JU Treasurer Prof Rasheda Akhter placed the budget in the annual senate session of the university at the senate hall under the chairmanship of vice-chancellor Prof Md Nurul Alam.

This year, the budget increased by Tk 24.28 crore over the previous year's budget of Tk 294.16 crore, keeping a net deficit of Tk 19.96 crore.

According to the proposed budget, the majority of the budget is allocated for the salaries of teachers, employees, pension of the former employees, and the university's administrative costs.

The university will spend 59.62 percent of the total budget on salary, 20.87 percent for pension and retirement facilities of the university, and 25.24 percent for administrative costs.

The budget will also be disbursed as medical facilities, information and communication costs, costs at mechanical sectors, associated costs as 0.15, 0.63, 1.73, 1.44 percent respectively.

Slamming the allocation of Tk 7.22 crore or only 2.45 per cent of the budget for research, some researchers and educationalists claimed that the research and education sector still remained ignored in the budget as like its previous budget.

Mohammad Tarikul Islam, Professor in Government and Politics at Jahangirnagar University and Visiting Scholar of Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, echoed the same.

‘The budget for research has increased in this fiscal year is a positive approach but it is not proportional like other sectors. The authorities should have emphasised on budgetary allocation for quality research. Because it will uplift the overall ranking of the university,’ he said.

He urged the university authorities to allocate a research budget for the students on the basis of their academic excellence.

In the previous fiscal year, the allocation for research was Tk 5.52 crore or only 1.92 per cent of the total budget.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) will provide Tk 279.12 crore to the proposed budget while Tk 39.32 crore will come from the university’s internal sources.

The internal source includes, selling admission forms, fees from students, internal assets, and cutting down different charges.

The previous budget was passed by the Senate on June 24, 2024.