Taxing higher education: Another bad move

Sakib comes from a modest middle-class family.  His father is about to retire and mother a housewife.  His parents somehow manages money to send him to North-South University. The high tuition of the private university is a burden on them and yet they think it is worth an investment.

From next year, his parents will be burdened further as the government proposes a 10 percent VAT on education in private universities and medical and engineering schools. They have to fork out additional Tk 50,000 for his tuition fees.

Like Sakib some four lakh students of private institutions, most of them from the middle-class segment, will face the same fate. And it is outright outrageous and cruel for a government to tax education like this.

These students do not have rich parents. The rich send their children abroad because most have no faith on our education standards.  Moreover, the government does not have enough education facilities to accommodate these four lakh youths. We are sure if there were enough higher education facilities most of these students would have never turned to private institutions.

Then what is the purpose of making education costlier for them? What benefit does it bring other than serving the narrow purpose to getting some bucks from these poor children? Is it the government’s policy to discourage higher education? Does this decision help develop human resource?

We all know the answers. This is a mindless fiscal policy that only harms the nation. However the government has been relentless in pursuing such skewed visions. It has also punished students of English medium school students by slapping a 7.5 percent VAT on fees and services. It seemed that the government has some kind of vicious dislike for learning good English and getting education on an international curriculum.

Such regressive policies will not, by any chance, help improve the education quality of the institutions. When the question of quality comes, the government steps are hopelessly flawed, toothless and inadequate. 

So we can conclude that the new policy will further worsen the education situation by any measure. Sane thinking should prevail and such regressive taxes should be withdrawn.