Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon has said that Bangladesh has 57 public universities and 116 private universities, with around 1.5 million vacant seats available for admission. However, he expects the total number of students seeking admission to be around 600,000.

“There is nothing to worry about for Dhaka University, medical colleges, Buet or other reputed universities. You can proceed with your admission processes, as I want to address the session backlog,” he said.

The minister made the remarks on Saturday (14 November) at an event organised to mark the 42nd annual conference of the Bangladesh Chemical Society at the Nawab Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Building of the University of Dhaka.

He said he was not asking Buet, Dhaka University or medical colleges to wait for students whose results might change following re-scrutiny, as there were plenty of vacant seats at other universities where they could secure admission.

The minister said this year’s examination results had been far from satisfactory, with only 52% of candidates passing. However, universities were already preparing to offer admission opportunities to students and could hold their admission tests as soon as possible.

“I have held a meeting with the vice-chancellors and decided to allow the re-scrutiny of examination scripts. The process will begin on 7 November and end on 23 November. We are scheduled to publish the re-scrutiny results on 23 November,” he said.

Milon said the Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University had decided to accept admission applications until 25 November. He added that he would request the Vice-Chancellor to extend the deadline by a few more days so that students whose results improve following re-scrutiny could also apply for admission.

Recalling his previous tenure from 2001 to 2006, the minister said he had identified irregularities in the evaluation of examination scripts in several instances. These included the replacement of answer scripts and inconsistencies in the allocation of marks.

“I caught several people red-handed. However, under the then-prevailing 1980 law, we did not have the authority to re-scrutinise examination scripts. We could not take action because of these legal limitations,” he said.

He said Parliament had amended the 1980 law and passed a new law in 2026, granting the authorities the power to re-scrutinise examination scripts.

Referring to this year’s SSC results, he said around 45,000 students had experienced changes in their grades following re-scrutiny. Of them, approximately 5,000 students who had previously failed had passed, while the GPA of 3,079 students had improved.

“This is a significant number,” he said.

The minister added that he was waiting for the re-scrutiny results and believed that many more students would see improvements in their results this time.

“I want to ensure that they also get the opportunity to enrol in higher education this year,” he said.

Reflecting on his own experience as a student at the University of Dhaka, Milon said, “Dhaka University is my university. I spent the longest period of my life here. It took me more than eight years to complete a four-year course. I hope no student will have to face such a situation in the future.”

He stressed that a four-year degree programme must be completed within four years and a five-year programme within five years.

“Under no circumstances should they take longer. If they do, it is a failure of the administration,” he added.