At 21, Jagannath University still battles housing and budget shortages as new halls and a second campus take shape

Jagannath University is celebrating its 21st founding anniversary in colourful fashion while still carrying a housing crisis, an inadequate budget and infrastructure limits. This year's University Day is being observed under the theme celebrating youthful, united Jagannath students.

The former Jagannath College became a full university on October 20, 2005, when parliament passed the Jagannath University Act, 2005. The institution has now completed 21 years and entered its 22nd.

University Day is normally observed on October 20, but this year the date fell during the Durga Puja public holidays, so the ceremony could not be held on schedule. Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Md Rais Uddin announced that the day would be celebrated on November 2 instead.

The institution's roots go back much further. In 1858, several landlords and education patrons founded the 'Brahmo School' in Dhaka as an education centre of the Brahmo Samaj. Kishorilal Ray Chowdhury, the landlord of Baliati in Saturia, Manikganj, later took charge of the financially struggling school. In 1872 it was renamed 'Jagannath School' after his father, Jagannath Ray Chowdhury.

In 1884 the British government turned it into a college. After Dhaka University was founded in 1921, undergraduate teaching at Jagannath College was temporarily suspended. The college was nationalised in 1968, and after a long movement it finally became a full university in 2005.

Today the university has about 19,000 students in 38 departments and two institutes under seven faculties, with about 700 teachers and about 550 officers and staff. Those involved say facilities and financial capacity have not grown in proportion to the expansion of students and academic activity.

The budget gap remains a major problem. For the 2026-27 fiscal year the university sought Tk 330 crore, but the University Grants Commission (UGC) approved only Tk 159 crore. Most of that allocation goes to salaries and allowances for teachers, officers and staff, leaving limited room for research grants, modern laboratories, teaching materials and student facilities.

Riazul Islam, vice-president of the Jagannath University Central Students' Union (JnUCSU), said that even after 21 years as a university, housing and budget shortages remain the biggest crises, and that meeting the university's growing needs with Tk 159 crore from the UGC this fiscal year will be difficult.

The housing shortage is sharper still. Against about 19,000 students, the university has only one residential hall, and that one is for female students; there is no hall for male students. Huge numbers of students must therefore live in messes or rented homes in Old Dhaka and nearby areas, adding financial pressure and disrupting their study environment.

To ease the crisis, two halls — Bani Bhaban Hall and Habibur Rahman Hall — are being built at Bangshal and Banglabazar in Old Dhaka under the Bangladesh Army's 25 Engineering Construction Battalion. According to project sources, roof casting has been completed up to the third floor of the six-storey buildings, with a target to finish construction by December 2026.

Army project director Lt Col Md Iftekhar Alam said that after the site was handed over on October 13, no engineer would believe the work could be finished within a year in such a difficult location. He hopes both projects will be completed by February or March next year, though overall they may take two to three extra months.

Students have also long awaited the second campus on 200 acres at Tegharia in Keraniganj. The project was approved at an ECNEC meeting in 2017, and a first cheque of about Tk 900 crore was handed over in 2019, but work did not advance at the desired pace amid various complications and allegations of irregularities and mismanagement.

After a long wait, the unfinished first-phase work of the second campus resumed in January 2025 under the Army's 25 Engineering Construction Battalion and is now under way. According to those involved, about 85 percent of the infrastructure work and about 80 percent of the financial side of the first phase are complete, with a target to finish by December 31, 2026.

Even finishing the first phase will not complete the second campus. Visible work on an electrical substation and the lake's slope protection has not yet begun, and no final decision has been made on when the second phase will start or under which agency. A JnUCSU source said the union's highest forum will discuss raising a demand at the upcoming ECNEC meeting for the second phase to be implemented through the Army.

Professor Dr Md Rais Uddin took charge as vice-chancellor in March this year and has stressed the need for collective effort to overcome the university's longstanding limitations. With two temporary residential halls rising in Old Dhaka and the first phase of the Keraniganj campus under way under the Army, teachers and students see new grounds for hope.