The outbreak of new coronavirus disease has triggered a global panic, affecting the mental well-being of people of all ages, including students. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between selfreported mental health concerns and subjective sleep quality of the Bangladeshi university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. A web-based cross-sectional study was conducted to maintain the social distancing recommended by the World Health Organization. There were 1,317 student responses from 49 universities across Bangladesh. Data was analyzed by executing both bi-variate and multivariate analysis. Findings indicate that 27.1%, 51.0%, 45.9%, and 86.0% of students had poor subjective sleep quality, anxiety, depression, and fear of COVID-19, respectively. Anxiety (AOR ¼ 1.09, 95% CI: 1.06-1.12, p < 0.001) was a risk factor for increasing the poor subjective sleep quality of university students. In contrast, the odds of poor subjective sleep quality were lower with increasing the score of depression (AOR ¼ 0.88, 95% CI: 0.86-0.90, p < 0.001) and fear of COVID-19 (AOR ¼ 0.97, 95% CI: 0.94-0.99, p < 0.05). Compared to public university students, private university students were more likely to report poor subjective sleep quality since the pandemic began. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that psychiatric conditions of university students should be monitored during the COVID-19 epidemic, and necessary strategies, such as allocation of resources, implementation of awareness programs, establishment of psychological counselling unit, should carefully be devised.

All the successive governments of Bangladesh – both civil or military – invested a considerable amount of national fortune in ensuring quality education for all, irrespective of caste or creed. Subsequently, Bangladesh has experienced significant growth in schools, colleges and universities in enrolment and completion rate of education with greater gender parity. However, the success stories were overshadowed by the persistent discrepancies, especially for spatial locations and social classes. This study, therefore, aimed at comparing the academic achievement of rural and urban students, and finding out the factors drawing differences in educational performances of the educands. Data were collected from 566 students selected from eight educational institutions following multistage proportionate random sampling administering a self-administered questionnaire. Findings suggest that age, sex, grades and track of education followed by the size of the class and student-teacher ratio played decisive roles for the educational disparities between the urbanites and ruralites. However, the most crucial factors were parental education and income and the family’s overall financial capacity for supplementary education. Based on the results, it is strongly suggested that the government should involve all the stakeholders, including parents, students, and teachers, to formulate future education policies and address the socioeconomic composition of schools. Additionally, the administration also needs to provide adequate resources, including trained teachers and sufficient infrastructural and other academic facilities, to improve overall educational and learning environments to achieve all-inclusive quality education for all.