The Department of Population Sciences (DPS) was established in 1998 under the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Dhaka (DU) in collaboration with UNFPA with a view to create a cadre of trained person-power for the nation by developing skills and creative judgments in individuals for understanding and effective management of population issues through a multidisciplinary approach.
The Department of Population Sciences offers a professional post-graduate degree program with duration of one year and a half (i.e., eighteen months). The degree awarded for this program is named Master of Population Sciences (MPS).
The program is open to individuals, coming from different disciplines, who plan to specialize and build careers in population related areas such as demographic analysis and population studies; fertility and reproduction; mortality and morbidity; migration and urbanization; population ageing; population, poverty, inequality; gender, population and development; reproductive and sexual health and reproductive rights; program management and planning; population, health and development policies; environment and climate change; food security and nutrition; HIV/AIDS; population management and human resource development; operations research and monitoring and evaluation; collection, processing and analysis of socio-economic, demographic and health related data.
The Master of Population Sciences (MPS) Professional Degree Program
The MPS degree program shall be of 48 credits and divided into 4 semesters. Each semester will be of 19 weeks, of which 15 weeks will be for class teaching, 1 week break for preparation, and 3 weeks for holding the semester final examinations.
Each full unit course shall be of 100 marks.
The program shall include teaching of 16 course units for a total of 1600 marks, which shall be translated into 48 credit hours.
The total credit hours shall be evaluated on the basis of 1600 total marks, of which 1500 marks shall be for 15 full units taught courses, or 1300 marks for 13 full unit taught courses and 200 marks for thesis research and 100 marks for written and oral comprehensive examinations.
There will be 4 courses in each semester with 100 marks each, resulting in 12 earned credits per semester.
Number of lecture classes/contact hours per week shall be determined on the basis of the credit hours assigned to each course. For a 3 credit course unit, there shall be two lecture classes of 60 minutes each and one 60 minutes discussion class/tutorial class/lab work/group presentations/class test every week.
The distribution of course units, marks and credit build up for the MPS Professional Degree Program for 1600 marks for 16 courses shall be as under: