ICT sector:the untouched pride of BANGLADESH

০৮ ই মে, ২০১১ ভোর ৫:০৬

1. Significance of Education in Nation Building



In this 21 st century no nation can dream of success without advancement of education, science and technology. This is more so for Bangladesh with 140 million people in only 55 thousand square miles. 30 years have passed since we got independence through heroic freedom fight. Unfortunately the country has not progressed, expectation of the common mass has remained unfulfilled. With the flow of time no hope of light is in sight; a sense of despair and lack of mission is engulfing the whole nation. Repeated failures of larger and larger dimensions in our national activities and in international arena are in one hand reducing self confidence of our people and on the other giving a poorer image of the country in the world. The whole nation is in a vicious circle of non-development.







Under these circumstances there must be some initiatives of far reaching consequences to lead the country back to the road of progress. Where else can we take the initiative other than in education? In spite of the fact that every Government in Bangladesh claims to have allocated the highest budget for education, the truth is that Sri Lanka allocates 3.4% of its GNP to education. Similar figures for India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh are respectively 3.2, 3.2, 2.77 and 2.2 percents. While budget for education in ADP just after independence was 21.14% this has decreased to 16% in year 2002-2003. Many people opine that education system of the country is in disarray and ineffective, quality is going down all the time. Dhaka



University was once highly regarded for its quality education and was named “ Oxford of the East”. With time excellence in education has been lost. Even in the ranking of Asia Week this university, the only one from Bangladesh, was ranked 46, then 35 and then possibly 63 among Asian universities! Again even in this ranking not excellence of education but in-take to admission aspirant ratio was responsible for the score. Very recently a ranking of 500 topmost universities of the world was published. It is very unfortunate that none of our institutions could make it to such large a list. This does reflect duly educational excellence that has been being harnessed inside the country. Educational institutions of the country are putting more time in non-educational matters without giving due attention to education. Moral degradation has reached an alarmingly low level. National development could not be made agenda of priority for the nation. Patriotism is also not in sight. Education helps a man develop good character, be responsible to the society and country. Continuous degradation of human values in Bangladesh does suggest that our education system has totally failed to reach its goal.



At the same time it may be mentioned that this part of India was always very famous for intellectual activities. Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose of Munshiganj, and not Marconi, was the inventor of radio. Satyen Bose has made a permanent position in science through Bose-Einstein statistics and duly honoured through naming of an elementary particle. Meghnad Saha of Kaliakoir region also had a profound impact through his discovery. Two Nobel Laureates in Rabindra Nath Tagore and Amartya Sen had the touch of the air and soil of Bangladesh in their body. Many of our graduates, teachers and students have been working in advanced countries with praiseworthy success. Our Dr Fazle Hossain is the only engineer who has been awarded with all the four top awards in the area of fluid mechanics. Our FR Khan was the architect of the most of the tallest buildings in US. Very recently Professor Mir Masoom Ali, the George and Frances Ball Professor of Ball State University, has been awarded Sagamore of the Wabash Award, the highest award of the Indiana State, 51-year old Ataul Karim is now Vice President for Research of Old Dominion University. All these facts do suggest that investment on education has praiseworthy return.







There are many examples in neigbouring countries where the development of a nation has been brought about with the improvement in education, with visionary initiative in this sector. Creation of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology(KAIST), Indian Institutes of Technology, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indian Institute of Science are glowing examples of initiatives in education that have changed the technological face of the country. KAIST is widely regarded as the creator of the modern Korea. Korea, the country that was so much humiliated at the outset of the last century by Japan, has now jointly organized World Cup Football in a befitting manner- the first such event in the soil of Asia. Moreover, it occupied a very commendable 4 th position, the best any Asian country has so far done. KAIST, and not any Japanese university, was recognized as the best technological university in Asia. Korea is now constructing ships, frigates and other products of heavy industries. It is hard to believe that about 40 years back Korean students used to come to Pakistan for higher studies, Korean leaders were so impressed to learn about the five year plans then formulated by Pakistan. It was the vision of a Korean leader at that time, who wanted to see Korea flourish in science and technology. This resulted in the creation of KAIST. Similar stories are heard about Jawaharlal Nehru who could vision the modern India through creation of IITs, BARC and other educational and research organizations that have brought name and fame of Indian education and technology, and have given India a firm footing. Success of these countries, which were in the same belt of progress as we were, in national development has been brought about by visionary initiative in education, creation of excellent educational and research institutes. The idea is to follow these footprints to bring about a qualitative change in development of Bangladesh. An excellent educational institution can work like a lamp house for all the educational institutions and other organizations of the society that can try to mimic the success. It can go a long way to build up educational base of the country, can change the lot of the country through science and technology, and can build up science and technological image of the country. An institution with vision cannot only develop its students as ideal citizen of the country, it can also act as a source of inspiration for the whole nation to build up national character, patriotism and moral.







For the last 30 years Korea has invested in education enormously, and the result is astonishing as can be seen from economic, scientific and technological progress. The mission of KAIST is to be one of the topmost research universities in the world. Not only that very soon they would like to produce a Nobel Laureate. And with that mission in view they have appointed a Nobel Laureate as the President of KAIST. Koreans have also been televising life of many Nobel Laureates to inspire their kids who would be winning Nobel Prize for Korea in near future. Where do we and our initiatives stand against the Korean missions? The same is true for Malaysia that was sending thousands of students to Australia and USA for many years for education. Now they are developing a commendable educational base. In our country in spite of the fact that each Government has been declaring the largest budget for education, the results do not in any way authenticate the claim.





2. Our Priority in ICT Education







Let me now come back to computer education. In Bangladesh for the last 15 years more and more universities opened departments in this field. Nationally we also aspired for changing lot of our distressed people through the golden touch of Information Technology. Unfortunately in none of our efforts did it appear that computer education should be given some priority. There were directives from the Government to double intake in relevant disciplines without really giving any commitment to improving laboratory facilities and development of faculty resources. Excellence of education at IBA Dhaka was initiated by the services of qualified faculty members from abroad as it was done in IITs, in India. In our case quality of education did not get any priority. With an indifferent image of the country internationally any breakthrough into multi-billion dollar IT World trade to have our share could only be achieved through attaining excellence in programming and other relevant IT skill. Just take the example of India. There are 7 IITs in India, and India is over 7 times as large as Bangladesh, and earns possibly about 700 times as much as we earn from IT. In this billion dollar business IIT graduates are aptly guiding the industry. To meet the aspiration of the people and the nation at BUET we increased yearly intake of CSE Department from 30 to 45 then 60 and then 120. What should we expect from IITs? Each IIT has an intake of 45 to 50 students. Now, look at the quality of IIT faculty members. Each of them has 20 to 30 faculty members, each of whom is a doctorate degree holder, and about 60% are professors. It is better not to compare our strength in this regard. We are late in this field. Moreover, we have a serious problem with our image in science and technology, in which case India is having much better an image although living in the same level of economic development. In addition to this, we are left with inadequately trained faculty members to teach so many bright students. We should have given a lot more attention to developing faculty members instead of increasing our intake. When you are a late starter you can enter into the field only through your superior quality.



For the last 10/15 years we have been dreaming to change the lot of the country through reaping the benefits of Information Technology. Different Governments have attached significant importance to IT calling it thrust sector and so on. Efforts have been made to formulate IT policies in order to expedite and accelerate its progress. Meetings, seminars, festivals, exhibitions on IT have become a part of our life. Initiatives have been taken so that Bangladesh is represented in world-wide software exhibitions and shows. Government have allocated funds through EPB and Bangladesh Bank to encourage export of software by our IT professionals. The Government have already set up an incubator to facilitate software development activities, have given tax holiday to our entrepreneurs. But unfortunately none of these initiatives have been rewarded with any mentionable success. A 2 billion dollar ambitious target for software export has been set although with no justifying indication in our performance. It appears that our initiatives are not mission-oriented. Instead of reserving different facilities for export-oriented jobs we should have increased software development jobs at home so that our professionals could become skilled and create an excellent profile before embarking upon exporting software. We are looking for our share in export market without having an appropriate profile. At the same time our own professionals are not getting opportunity of software development and other ICT jobs available at home. This self contradictory attitude should be stopped in favour of creating jobs for our own graduates and professionals.



Time and again Government have instructed to increase intake in computer departments throughout the country with the hope that these graduates will add to the IT workforce. However, there has been no government initiative to develop laboratory facilities or faculty in universities. While professionals of different fields are able to participate in IT related workshops and other training programs, as far as I know these facilities are almost never available to teachers of computer departments of any university. Private universities are opening their programme with CS courses. We do not have any plan to develop CS faculty. There is a growing fictitious demand of increasing IT graduates whereas there is no initiative to increase job opportunities. Of the 62 institutions running computer science program under National University only 32 could sell admission forms only to 250 prospective admission seekers. Quality of IT education, for that matter education in general, has remained absolutely ignored in the country. This is the environment under which CS faculties and students in the country have been working. Nevertheless efforts and initiatives taken by CS faculties and students in raising their educational and co-curricular activities are truly exceptional. We understand in a country economically so poor and with so much lack in farsightedness, excellence in academic and research pursuit can only come through introduction of a healthy competition among our universities and educational institutions. It appears that over the last 7/8 years we have been able to create that environment of competition successfully. We are aware of our deficiencies and the big responsibility that has been placed on our shoulders without strengthening it, reinforcing it.





3. Education in Information and Communication Technology







In Bangladesh computer education in school level was started about 10 years back. Only a handful of universities started their degree programs on computer science and engineering at that time. So school students were too unlucky to have teachers with appropriate education. Such a hurried introduction forced to have teachers who neither had an introduction to computers nor did have the required background. Moreover, hardly had we taken initiative to formalize their knowledge and give a minimum background. This will have a serious negative impact on the quality of computer education our kids will be having for a long time. Possibly realizing the dearth of computer teachers in schools and colleges National University started degree program giving affiliation to private colleges and institutions at a later time. Again the problem is in finding adequate number of teachers to teach the subjects.



In Bangladesh we have now over 50 private universities and seventeen public universities. Although not all public universities have been teaching CS courses vigorously, private universities have taken the initiative and usually start their academic program with the opening of an ICT oriented department. The first degree-awarding department started at BUET with the opening of Computer Engineering Department in 1984. Initially it offered 2-year Masters course and then in 1987 started B.Sc. Engineering course. So far in twelve batches, about 500 students have been awarded B. Sc. Engineering, 80 M. Sc. Engineering and 1 Ph. D. degree from this department.







As was mentioned earlier we do not have any educational institution whose faculty strength is comparable to that of any IIT. Moreover, teacher student ratio is also very high. So it is only logical to conclude that there is no reason for us to be at par in quality with the Indian institutions. To give one concrete example, while IITs take 30 students to their B Tech Programme we at BUET take 120. Our faculty strength in number of teachers is about the same as IITs. But whereas all faculty members at IITs are doctorate degree holders with about 60% professors we have only 4/5 doctorate degree holders and the remaining are young graduates.



With a rather indifferent image world wide we can penetrate into multi-billion dollar IT market only through establishing quality and excellence in skill. To do this we must immediately find ways and means to improve quality of computer education through developing faculty members, opening opportunities for our teachers to refresh their knowledge in the ever-changing field of IT. I must also mention that quality of general education in Bangladesh is going down all the time. Immediate attention must also be given to ensure quality of education in primary and secondary levels. Countries like Malaysia and Korea generously invited academicians from foreign countries to leapfrog quality of their educational programs. We should also try to follow their footprint, which earned so much success through human resource development. It is only through developing human resources that can an overpopulated country like ours with the only surplus resource develop and earn success in the 21 st century.





4. Research Activities in ICT







The discipline of computer science is fairly new in our country. Institutional education started with the establishment of Computer Engineering Department at BUET in 1984. Most of our faculty members are young. Senior members are usually from other fields, who realized the potential of the discipline and started working in this new field with a great sense of urgency. In Bangladesh research has never been a culture in universities and research organizations, and it is duly reflected in our contribution to the world of science and technology. About 6/7 years back each university having computer science program had an acute shortage of teachers. This is also true now. We have about 60 universities teaching computer science curricula and there is no initiative for development of faculty members. While our academic load was always heavy, and the fast developing nature of the technology required not only refreshing knowledge but also to earn new knowledge and be familiar with the new technology, our faculty members are trying their best to do that. At the same time the brilliant students of our departments took keen interest to learn the technology and earn knowledge with their own initiative. I still remember the interest with which first batches of students at BUET started learning computer programming and other aspects of the technology at their own initiative overlooking whatever deficiency we had in the faculty. In spite of the fact that we were ill-staffed, students were far-sighted enough to select CSE departments for their career building at a time when other departments were much better staffed with richer heritage and resources. In spite of all our deficiencies we were quite aware that university education is not all about imparting known knowledge we must also contribute through creating knowledge.







It was in July/August of 1997 when in the only 7-faculty-member rich CS Department of Dhaka University decision was taken to organize a National Conference on Computer and Information Systems. We boldly supported the initiative taken by Professor Lutfar Rahman and his young colleagues. The first such conference was held at the premises of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission and Dhaka University. 64 paper-rich conference proceedings was published before the conference was inaugurated. Of the 30 papers published from BUET 25 were coauthored by undergraduate students. I am sure contribution of students of other universities will also be similarly praiseworthy. My introduction to our universities dates back as late as to 1987. But I do not have any reason to believe that in any conference held in Bangladesh never ever the participation of undergraduate students was so massive.

















That the quality of our research findings is also good can be concluded from the fact that at least twenty papers of these conferences have been published in reputed international journals. I feel tempted to cite that our graduate Rezaul Alam Chowdhury published 6 papers in international journals while he was still an undergraduate. The similar figure was from Suman Kumar Nath who is now a MicroSoft Research employee after completing PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. A professor of CS Department of MIT, while visiting our department, was surprised to learn about these statistics and could only believe after seeing the papers and the students authoring them. Now at BUET we have at least 20 students in CSE Department who published their results in international journals while they were still undergraduates. Similar trend can also be found in other universities. I would also like to mention that excellent graduates in Dr Manzur Murshed, now a faculty at Monash University, Suman Kumar Nath, Rezaul Alam Chowdhury have been able to convince academicians of renowned universities that computer graduates from Bangladesh do have excellence in merit and computer skill. Our graduate Dr Ekram Hossain has become an Editor of IEEE Mobile Communication at a young age. Our teacher Dr Md Saidur Rahman is a coauthor of a book on Planar Graph Drawing, and is already regarded as an authority in the field. His contributions have been recognized by FUNAI Information Science Promotion Award for the year 2004.Professor Hashem of KUET is the coauthor of the book “Evolutionary Computations: New Algorithms and Their Applications to Evolutionary Robots. Very recently Imranul Haque and Sonia Jahid, now faculty at CSE BUET, participated in the World Convention of engineers in 2004 held at Shanghai and was awarded third prize fro their project.





Other graduates have been either pursuing their higher studies or serving with a lot of success. Our Munirul Abedin could get a coveted offer from Microsoft while he was still an undergraduate student of our department. Md Saifur Rahman of CSE BUET also got offer near his graduation. Protik of CS, DU also got similar offer. Similar figure is true for Intel as well. There are now 20 CSE graduates serving MicroSoft with reputation. This our effort has paid off dividends. Now our graduates are able to get admitted into finest schools of the world. This culture of research in a poor country like ours has been appreciated by academicians abroad. In the initial years of our journey our graduates were not confident in applying to highly ranked universities. Now they are. We have now our graduates at Carnegie Mellon, ranked number one in computer science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, (ranked 5 th), Cornell, Yale, Columbia, Austin, Princeton, Cambridge, Waterloo, Toronto, USC, ANU, Monash and other famous universities. Our graduates have been appointed as professor at University of Waterloo, and faculty positions at different North American and Australian universities. I must say that this praiseworthy effort of computer science academic community is unprecedented for any discipline in Bangladesh. We are doing it very loyally for the welfare of the country in spite of the fact that computer science education has remained largely ignored. It has remained unlucky in terms of investment for development of laboratory and other infrastructural facilities and above all faculty development although we have not fallen short of chalking out plans to earn $2 billion dollar by software export. How can one avoid investment on education where the whole industry is knowledge driven, and we are yet to earn goodwill and respect from other countries for our education, science and technology? To earn such a handsome figure presupposes at least 10% investment on education.





5. Bangladeshi Students in ACM ICPC



For the last six years computer students of Bangladesh have got the unique opportunity of participating in programming contests organized by the Association for Computing Machinery(ACM) International Computer Programming Contest(ICPC). It may be mentioned here that in 1993 Computer Jagat organized a programming contest for four different age groups. Then in 1995 6 school students Nasa, Fahim, Faris, Alen and Opu participated in a programming contest in Colombo during November 1-10, organized by South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation However, organizing programming contests became regular with the introduction of ACM ICPC Asia regional Contest held at North South University in 1997. Credit goes to Professor AL Hoque of North South University to introduce Bangladeshi students to this prestigious contest.







Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the most prestigious and largest body of computer professionals. It was established in 1947 and is the first educational and scientific computing society with over 80,000 professionals and students as its members. To move computing education and research forward ACM initiates and executes a set of activities like hosting programming contests, recognizing academic activities of computer students and awarding the most prestigious Turing awards to distinguished academicians for their contribution to computer science and information technology.



2010 World Finals



The 2010 ACM-ICPC World Finals were held at Harbin Engineering University, in Harbin, China, February 1–6, 2010. Shanghai Jiaotong University won the contest, solving 7 of 10 problems. Gold medal winners were Shanghai Jiaotong University (China), Moscow State University (Russia), National Taiwan University (Taiwan), and Kiev University (Ukraine).





2009 World Finals



The 2009 ACM-ICPC World Finals were held at the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, April 18–21, 2009. The World Finals was sponsored by IBM and hosted by the Royal Institute of Technology. St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics won, solving 9 of 11 problems. Gold Medal winners were St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics (Russia), Tsinghua University (China), St. Petersburg State University (Russia), Saratov State University (Russia).



2008 World Finals



The 2008 ACM-ICPC World Finals were held at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, in Banff, Alberta, April 6–10, 2008. The World Final was sponsored by IBM and hosted by the University of Alberta celebrating their 100th anniversary. Over 7,000 teams competed on six continents at the regional level. 100 of these teams will advance to the World Finals. St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics won, solving 8 of 10 proplems. Gold medal winners were St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics (Russia), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States), Izhevsk State Technical University (Russia), Lviv National University (Ukraine).



2007 World Finals



The 2007 ACM-ICPC World Finals were held at the Tokyo Bay Hilton, in Tokyo, Japan, March 12–16, 2007. The World Finals was sponsored by IBM and hosted by the ACM Japan Chapter and the IBM Tokyo Research Lab. Some 6,099 teams competed on six continents at the regional level. Eighty-eight teams advanced to the World Finals. Warsaw University won its second world championship, solving 8 of 10 problems. Gold Medal Winners were Warsaw University (Poland), Tsinghua University (China), St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics (Russia), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States).



2006 World Finals



The 2006 ACM-ICPC World Finals were held in San Antonio, Texas, sponsored by IBM and hosted by Baylor University. 5,606 teams representing 1,733 universities from 84 countries competed in elimination rounds, with 83 of those teams proceeding to the world finals. Saratov State University from Russia won, solving 6 of 10 problems. Gold medal winners were Saratov State University (Russia), Jagiellonian University (Poland), University of Twente (The Netherlands), Altai State Technical University (Russia).



2005 World Finals



The 2005 world finals were held at Pudong Shangri-La Hotel in Shanghai on April 6, 2005, hosted by Shanghai Jiaotong University. 4,109 teams representing 1,582 universities from 71 countries competed in elimination rounds, with 78 of those teams proceeding to the world finals. Shanghai Jiaotong University won its second world title, with 8 of 10 problems solved. Gold medal winners were Shanghai Jiaotong (China), Moscow State University (Russia), St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics (Russia), and University of Waterloo (Canada).



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This particular event of organizing programming contests with the participation of students from around the world does have a far-reaching influence. This motivates students to earn excellence in programming, and students do get the opportunity to compare their skill with the very best of the world. In the remaining portion of the article I shall be discussing this aspect of ACM, its history and growing participation of students in this contest in particular that of Bangladesh.



In 1995 the only Regional Contest was held in Taipei. In year 2003 the contests are being held at 10 sites of which Dhaka is one. North South University hosted the regional contest during 1997-2000. BUET organized the event in 2001 and 2002 and is again organizing this year







In the very first appearance BUET Team occupied 24 th position out of 54 teams keeping behind the team of Stanford University. After 6 years involvement in the ACM Contest it now appears to me that in spite of the fact that the result was nowhere near our expectation, not in anyway substantiated by experience, this was a great success for us. Students got inspiration from this and started improving their programming skill. This resulted in massive participation of our students in the largest Online Contest organized by the University of Valladolid, where once 18 Bangladeshi students were ranked in the list of topmost 25 In recognition of their feat the Honourable Prime Minister gave 9 students a cash award of Tk. One lac each in the concluding session of the Science week of 1999. A National Computer Programming Contest was also organized and hosted at Sheraton on the 5 th of August, 1998 under the leadership of Zakaria Swapan, a BUET graduate and employee of Proshika Computer System with the participation of the Daily Star, in which the Honourable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was the Chief Guest in the prize giving ceremony. This did help grow a tremendous interest in students and the computing community.



In Asia regional Dhaka Site Bangladeshi students showed their superiority in programming skill over those of neighbouring nations.





Participation at IIT Kanpur ACM ICPC Regional Contest



A team from BUETconsisting of Mustaq Ahmed, Munirul Abedin and Md. Rubaiyat Ferdous Jewel named BUET Loopers participated at IIT Kanpur Contest in 1999. Other teams participated from Bangladesh are Dhaka University, AMA International University and North South University. The contest was held on the 7 th of December. Fifty nine teams participated- 4 from Bangladesh and 1 from Iran, and multiple teams from each of the IITs. Astonishing all local elites the Team from BUET became champion and that from Dhaka University became runner up. This was a great result from Bangladeshi students beating their celebrated counterparts in their own soil in a game where their excellence is recognized world wide and ours largely unknown and ignored.







It was such great a moment to be in India amongst all IITs and other institutions and occupying champion’s and runner-up’s position from a country like Bangladesh that has heaps of non-success in national life. Not much light of hope is seen in social life or in our economy or in the programs of different political parties as well. Our students have beaten about sixty Indian teams in their own soil in computer programming contest, where Indians are earning billions of dollar through software export and other nations are already considering India as a super power in computing. This has happened at a time when in Bangladesh we are also dreaming of earning a sizeable amount of dollar through software export although possibly not yet quite well planned. Indian achievement in science, technology and commerce is much more commanding than their sports. In fact, these two are not in comparable levels. Success of our students should be used as a source of inspiration. If we try we can do it. In Bangladesh for the last three years we are trying very hard to earn excellence in education and training in university level, especially in the field of computer science. Our performance in international conferences and in programming contests does reflect that sincere efforts are being paid off.



Participation of Bangladeshi Teams in the Regionals and World Finals



Since introduction to ACM ICPC Bangladeshi students have participated in all world finals by being champion of some Asian Sites. The first time BUET team, consisting of Suman Kumar Nath, Rezaul Alam Chowdhury and Tarique Mesbaul Islam, the champions of ACM ICPC Asia Region Dhaka Site, and a team from North South University as hosts, participated in the 22 nd World Finals held at Atlanta on February, 1998. In this contest BUET Team solved 3 problems and occupied 24 th position. In November, 1998 BUET teams occupied the first 4 positions in the regional contest and the team of Farah Farzana, Mehedy Masud and Mojahedul Haque Abul Hasanat, earned the right to participate in the World Finals, where NSU team also appeared as hosts. This time the 23 rd Final was held at the Technical University of Eindhoven.







The 24 th World Finals of ACM ICPC was held at Orlando. Florida, USA on the 18 th of March, 2000. This contest that attracted 1968 teams drawn from 1041 universities of 69 countries dispersed in 6 continents and participated in 82 sites. From these teams 60 teams qualified for the World Finals. We have one team from Bangladesh in this prestigious group. Not only that they occupied 11 th position beating all the teams from American Universities. This is really an achievement we can feel proud of.



By being champion again at IIT Kanpur Site Regionals 2000, BUET students Munirul Abedin, Mustaq Ahmed and Abdullah-Al-Mahmood earned the right of participating in the 25 th World Finals held at Vancouver. In regional contests of year 2001 2,160 teams from 1,079 universities of 70 countries on 6 continents participated in the 89 sites. Moreover, in the preliminaries about 2,700 teams participated. These figures do indicate the tremendous interest this contest has been attracting throughout the world. In World Finals 2001 our students could solve 3 problems and occupied 29 th position.



In year 2002 BUET team qualified for the 26 th World Finals held at Honolulu, Hawaii by being champion at Dhaka Site, while AIUB got wild card from both Dhaka Site and IIT Kanpur Site. In the 27 th World Finals in 2004 held in Los Angeles Asif-Saifur-Mehedi’s team of BUET qualified from Dhaka Site contest. In the 28 th World Finals held at Prague the same team qualified and occupied 27 th position out of 73 teams. Moreover, in a 67-team Java challenge they came out 17 th. I would like to humbly submit that of the 3 teams from the subcontinent only our students could be ranked in the World Finals. While we are not at all comparable to India in any field of education, our students are regularly outperforming Indian students in programming contests through the excellence of which skill Indians are earning billions of dollar from software export market.







In year 2004, Dhaka Site contest was held at North South University with the participation of 96 teams of which 4 teams were from Fudan University China, National University of Singapore and two teams from IIT Bombay. Fudan University team became the winner and BUET Explorer consisting of Manzurur Rahman Khan, Mushfiqur Rouf and Abdullah Al Mahmud became runner up, against establishing programming excellence of our students. Of the 96 teams 65 became successful in solving at least one problem. The BUET tem participated in the 29 th World Finals of ACM ICPC held at Shanghai on 6 th of April, 2005 and occupied 29 th position among 78 teams where teams from famous institutions like National University of Singapore, IIT ended up being only honourably mentioned.





Programming Contests in Bangladesh



The hosting of programming contests by different universities has almost become a culture. BUET is hosting internal contest on regular basis. So is the case with North South University, AIUB, East West University, IUB, IIUC, Ahsanullah University, SUST and other universities. An excellent programming contest AIPC was organized by American International university of Bangladesh with the participation of bout 68 teams from all over the country including a team consisting of school and college students. Another contest was organized by the new Southeast University with the participation of about 50 teams. Our universities have taken it as a matter of prestige to do well in these contests since there are no more competitions among universities. In our country universities are not ranked. So there is no way of recognizing achievements of individual universities. This indifference to performance is definitely telling upon quality of our education. However, programming contests with the participation of our universities is giving rise to a healthy competition among university students and community to be more skilled in programming. For a country like ours with a very high population density and not much resources other than human resources any sign of hope in the improvement of our lot will necessarily come through development of human resources. What else other than Information Technology can play a decisive role in this regard?



In year 2002 the National Computer Programming Contest was organized by Southeast University with Tanbir Ahmed as Director and Shahriar Manzoor, the World Finals Judge of year 2003 and 2004 as Chief Judge. Students were tested by challenging problems set by internationally renowned problem setters. Again the contest was a grand success with the participation of contestants and coaches from all over the country. Another nation-wide programming contest is being held at American International University of Bangladesh during August 8-9 with the participation of students from all over the country. This will undoubtedly sharpen programming skill of our students and in time will contribute to the development of our ICT sector.







This year we are organizing National Computer programming Contest at International Islamic University Chittagong on 3-4 December with the participation of over 60 teams from different universities of the country. We are also organizing National Informatics Olympiad on the 26 th of November for school/college students to pave the way of their participation at the International Olympiad in Information to be held in Poland during August 18-25, 2005.



From over 6,000 teams representing over 1,700 universities in 84 countries on 6 continents, eighty (80) world finalist teams will compete in the ACM-ICPC World Finals in San Antonio, April 9 - 13, 2006. This year 2 teams will be participating from Bnagladesh in the World Finals of ACM ICPC to be held at San Antonio, Texas, USA. One from Dhaka University ands the other from BUET. The following are the universities with clean record of participation together with the repetition count: Waterloo (14), Moscow State U, SPIFMO(11), BUET(9), Fudan, KTH-Royal IT(5). Does it not appear to be very unlikely and too good statistics for our country?







Performance of Our Students at Valladolid Site



It may be mentioned here that since the end of 1998 Rezaul Alam Chowdhury headed the list of about 3000 programmers that participated in the programming contest organized by the University of Valladolid (acm.uva.es/problemset). Then for quite a while Shahriar Manzoor, another student of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering topped the list. In spite of the fact that the contest has not been organized for a specified period and students can spend as much time on it as they like, a thick participation from Bangladeshi students is definitely encouraging. Our students are improving their skill. Since their participation Bangladesh also headed the list of countries by criterion of quality of submission, total number of correct submissions and average number of correct submission per participant. I believe such participation of our students will go a long way in improving their skill. This also brings some name to the country. It may be mentioned here that a report by Shahriar Manzoor, as to how to solve problems, have been found so important by the Valladolid Authority that it has been posted by them to help students from all over the world.



It may be mentioned here that with the initiative of Shahriar Manzoor several on-line contests were held at Valladolid Site with the participation of many teams from different countries. Moreover, Rezaul Alam Chowdhury and Shahriar Manzoor organized the warm-up contest for the World Finalists, which was also suggested by the contest director. All these events have raised the image of Bangladesh very high. In many of these contests students of BUET, Dhaka University, AIUB and other universities excelled in performance. Shahriar Manzoor’s problem solving guide has been posted in the web by the Valladolid management for the participating students all over the world.







Performance of Bangladeshi students in the famous Valladolid Site is overwhelming. Students not only from Dhaka University or BUET but from other universities are participating with great enthusiasm. In 1998 when our students started their participation even country code of Bangladesh was not there for registration. But now, by six years of time, Bangladeshi flag is a common sight in Valladolid Site. According to statistics of Wed Jan 04 11:39:49 UTC 2006 a total of 63,475 contestants from over 177 countries are participating in this site. It is unbelievable that our country ranking is one there. Some of the statistics are furnished in the table below.











First position has been occupied by Anton Maydell of Russia solving 1707 problems. In the top 25 w have three students- Manzurur Rahman Khan of CSE, BUET s now at 10 th position solving 1230 problems while Sabur Zahid of AIUB and Mushfiqur Rouf Nasa, alumnus of CSE, BUET are respectively in positions 14 and 22. It may be mentioned here that ranklist of Bangladeshi students have been enriched predominantly by students of CSE department, BUET.



In the rank list of the top 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 students number of Bangladeshi students are respectively 17, 33, 52, 71 and 84- a very commendable feat for any group of Bangladeshi participants in any competition. Over 1.5 million people with interest in ICT has visited this site, each of whom knows red and green Bangladeshi flag and that Bangladeshi students are skilled in programming. If we are to impress upon world ICT community with our IT skill then I think this statistics and performance of Bangladeshi students should be massively publicized.



Programming Contests Should be Held



It is very satisfying to note that through participating in programming contests our students have developed commendable programming skill which otherwise only through classroom assignments would have been impossible. Verifying whether a written program works correctly for all inputs cannot be done simply through laboratory classes. It requires a lot more efforts than that can be made in the classroom. Through using resources in the internet our students are now able to overcome some of the deficiencies in our resource availability. Programs when submitted to different sites are being tested by computers and results of judgment are being sent to participants through email. Students of different countries are now competing against each other resulting in development of programming skill all over the world. Bangladeshi students are not lagging behind. They are facing challenge and preparing themselves to face it successfully. Students are also learning techniques by discussing the relevant issues amongst themselves.



In spite of praiseworthy achievement of our students we are yet to host programming contests as often as desirable in a nation-wide basis. After the first national contest in 1998 we have failed to host one in 1999. Although individual universities like AIUB, BUET, Southeast University, International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC) among others are organizing programming contests for greater motivation this should be organized in a bigger scale. In year 2000, at long last, a national contest was organized with initiative from S&T Ministry and host BUET. With a break in years 2001 and 2002 the NCPC was again organized at Southeast University inspired by the interest of Dr Abdul Moyeen Khan, Honourable Minister of Science and Information and Communication Technology. In the month of December,2004, away-from-the-capital enthusiastic IIUC organized the National Computer programming Contest with the participation of 69 teams from different universities and a great team of small kids from Notre Dame College. The college kids







If we are to do something astounding in the field of computing, keep our mark in this technology through capturing a reasonable portion of software export market we must develop our manpower since that is the only resource we have in abundance. This can be done through inspiring our young students/people in improving their skill. Contests are the right events that can elevate skill of our students. We must develop a new culture in our society. In spite of wasting our efforts organizing events that are not expected to improve our economy we must organized programming contests. This should be done by universities, clubs, computer societies, nationally and in colleges as it is done at Notre Dame. At least the organizations using information technology should sponsor these events. Fortunately, universities are showing tremendous interest. Many universities are organizing internal contests with lucrative incentives to winners. American International University already hosted a nation-wide programming contest with the participation of over 65 teams. North South University organized a tri-university contest with the participation of Dhaka University and BUET. Other universities are also showing interest to play their role in strengthening the culture of programming contests. It is noteworthy that expatriate Bangladeshis are also keen to say their motherland prosper in technological know-how and earn a better image. Professor Ataul Karim, Vice President for at Old Dominion University, facilitated financial assistance from North American Bangladeshi Islamic Community to teams participating in the World Finals.



In the last nine years’ participation, achievement of our students in world-wide competitions appears more significant than our achievement in any field where we have been trying years after years. There is no doubt that we are stronger in our brains as is evident also in having Niaz Morshed as the first grandmaster of the subcontinent. Our resources are limited we must utilize it optimally, we must use it in areas where expectation of return is high. We have too much manpower to utilize at home. We should train then to improve their skill so that they can contribute to national economy in many ways even by going abroad.





6. Competition- an Effective Means of Attaining Excellence



Competition is the driving force of excellence in all fields. United States of America with about 5% population of earth has been able to dominate the world in most of the areas by virtue of establishing a healthy competitive environment. Over 4,500 higher education institutions are on the run for excellence. Every year every institution, department is ranked on the basis of their performance in the last year. A lowly ranked university has to face public criticism and degraded social rank for its failure to keep up excellence. Every year every university, department is recognizing best teachers, researchers even TAs and RAs based upon their performance. Unfortunately such a ranking is not available in Bangladesh in spite of the fact that there is only a handful educational institutions. For several years the Asia Week magazine ranked Asian universities, where our position was not commendable at all. There is a growing perception that our education system is falling apart. We never compare. Without comparison one cannot judge one’s position. We should compare performance of Indian educational institutions of primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Performance of IITs are far ahead than those of any higher educational institutions in Bangladesh. It has to be appreciated and remedial measures for our ill-performance should be taken. Information and Communication technology can be used to analyze performance of different educational institutions and then rank them. Now public examination tabulation is being done using computers. So all relevant data are already in electronic media and ready for any analysis we want to perform upon them. This is not only for stopping unfair means in examination result processing that should we use computers but also for giving necessary feedback for better performance. In fact while human errors can be removed by using computers malpractices, ill-motivated wrong doings cannot be fully eliminated since computer works under the command of a human being. In an overpopulated highly unemployed country like Bangladesh replacing humans by computers is not good enough we must also be able to increase our productivity, improve quality of policy making through making appropriate information available at the right time. By processing grades, marks that students obtained it is not good enough to say who got which grade just like lower grade employees of Board offices used to do, we must also be able to say which school or college performed well and rank them. We can also say students of which area is particularly good or bad in Mathematics, English or other subjects. This ranking of schools, colleges or even regions like Upozilla, District or Division is expected to arouse a lot of interest not only among teachers and students but also among guardians and inhabitants of the concerned locality. Some more information on guardian, if taken during registration, could give us insight into the performance of students and determine whether there is any correlation between performance of students and educational, professional and economic condition of their guardians. Based upon statistics teachers, schools or colleges could have been recognized. Similar competitive spirit could have been grown among universities, among departments. Now we do not possibly have any clue regarding performance of different universities. Since there is not much monitoring of what universities are doing there is no question of attaining excellence. Based upon some rational statistics universities, departments and even teachers could have been ranked. Appointment to different high ranks at universities could be more transparent by making information on excellence of candidates in relevant fields available to public and interested community. ICT can be massively used to invoke a competitive environment in all sectors of education. Universities and other institutions can be inspired to have their home pages enriched with the information on their achievements, which can also play important role in recognizing individuals and institutions and giving them rewards and grants.



Our experience in holding programming contests and organizing Mathematics Olympiads is very inspiring and suggests that such events effectively complement some of the deficiencies of educational resources, and inspires students and teachers to earn excellence in knowledge and skill.

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