Universities have become factories to produce unemployed graduates

The student-people uprising has brought to the fore the question of reform. What are the key aspects of reform in Bangladesh’s higher education sector in your view?

The first aspect of reform in higher education is the administration. Due to massive politicisation over several decades, three main pillars of Bangladesh’s higher education - quality of education, employability training and research - have been damaged. Teacher recruitment and promotion process should be based on merit in the coming days. Initiatives such as prioritising competent candidates outside of an organisation can be thought out for the time being to eradicate nepotism. International researchers of Bangladeshi origin should be provided an opportunity to carry out research in the local universities and management.

The second aspect of the reform is the standard and accreditation of degrees. First grade regulatory management is required to transform the existing third grade university-system. All degree programmes and curriculum need to be assessed impartially and amended so that university degrees ensure employability. To this end, the accountability of vice chancellors and what they are supposed to do has to be ensured.

There is no alternative to ensure a neutral and professional University Grants Commission (UGC) to create a competitive environment among the universities.

The third aspect is to create an administrative system in campuses for empowering the students. Such a system will enable students to channel regular and constructive opinions to university administration on academic issues. Also, “Strategic Plan for Higher Education in Bangladesh: 2018-2030” implemented by the previous government needs critical review.

Universities are reopening after a long hiatus. A major mistrust has been created in the relations between students and teachers. What is the way out of this problem?

This mistrust is a culmination of negligence towards students on campuses, degradation of standard of education, absence of teachers as well as long standing irregularities, corruption, political malpractice and mismanagement. The first thing needed to do away with this mistrust is to restore the culture of accountability and dialogue.

University administrations have to acknowledge the students as the main stakeholder in line with the new reality. An environment of open dialogue between students and teachers has to be created for the sake of reforms in terms of quality of education in the classroom, efficiency of students, social welfare and security in campuses.

It has to be ensured that student representatives can raise their demands through an administrative and legal framework against irregularities in academic activities. For this, empowerment of student-teacher welfare organisations without influence of party-based politics is needed. 

The leaders of Students Against Discrimination should become more active to ensure that students refrain from any disrespectful demeanors and illegal steps against teachers.

Our universities cannot make it to global rankings and even Asian rankings. How do you see the overall crisis of higher education?

Crisis of our higher education can be explained by three measures - equality, accountability in management and knowledge-based and research-oriented education.

The higher education sector has seen massive expansion since 1971 in terms of both infrastructure and statistics. Participation in higher education was only 2 per cent in our country during the liberation war. The rate increased to 10 per cent in 2010 and further to 20 per cent in 2020. This rise in higher education is the result of infrastructural investment by the government and private initiatives. So it can be said that the higher education sector has advanced in terms of numbers. Bangladesh currently has 55 public and 114 private universities.

This visible and external improvement has also created a big plot of crisis in higher education. I will refer to three incongruities here. Firstly, although the previous government spoke about establishing universities in every district, the reality is 41 per cent of the universities of the country are located in Dhaka. Some 21 per cent of public universities are located in Dhaka. In common practice, government intervention comes when private initiatives fail. But we have seen the opposite here. What is the point of establishing 12 public universities in Dhaka when enough private universities are here?

Secondly, the expansion process of our higher education system was considerably lacking planning. We did not establish a single university for research. How many universities will be “centre of excellence”, how many of them will lead in research and what would be the standard of research, who are being recruited as university teachers and who are getting appointed in administrative posts, how many university graduates will be required annually in labour market - there were no proper state policy and investment to deal with these issues.

While the education budget was not increased in proportion to GDP, the scant budget had also been wasted. Many public universities were established out of political consideration. Even the developing countries in Asia (such as Malaysia) that are advanced economically and industrially, such as technology, microchips and aviation, don’t have any specialised aerospace university. But “Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Aviation and Aerospace University” was approved in Bangladesh in 2019. What is the rationale behind approval of such “white elephant” educational institutions in Bangladesh?

Thirdly, higher education expansion was done unilaterally side-stepping fundamental discussions such as which section of the youth are getting enrolled in universities and if they are prepared. A large section of students with significant “learning gaps” in primary and secondary stages have enrolled in the universities. Around 72 per cent of 8.8 million students in higher education are from National University. The existing crisis is further accentuated as 2,257 colleges under the National University are providing honours and masters degree en masse without minimal scrutiny.

In all, the picture of expansion of our higher education sector is contradictory to our dream of becoming a middle income economy country and industrialisation by 2031. South-East Asian middle income countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand not only partake in university rankings, but also in rankings of secondary education.

Even 10 per cent of Bangladeshi universities don’t participate in the practice of the international ranking system. The main reason behind that is they don’t have any liability and guidelines about the overall education system and university’s own management except for delivering some hollow slogans such as achieving sustainable socioeconomic development through excellence in higher education.

For several decades, the governments focused mainly on approving universities and building infrastructure while effort on improving quality of education was frustratingly overlooked. How would you explain this?

The previous governments had a serious lack of goodwill in improving the quality of education. Bangladesh remains one of the most backward countries in terms of allocation in the education sector in proportion with GDP. Education and all other sectors were victims of politicisation of the development process and misappropriation of budget allocated for projects. That’s why learning-centric reforms remained overlooked and infrastructure related projects got priority.

A total of 14 public universities were established during the previous government in political consideration. Such allocations and projects were a major source of looting for a section of teachers, leaders and activists of student organisations and contractors. From the government’s point of view these projects were a cheap manifestation of making its development successes conspicuous and earning political legitimacy.

So if the budget allocation is not raised, there is no possibility of improvement in the quality of education…  

Globally, disappointment over the quality of education is not limited to a lack of budgetary allocations today. For example, public school teacher salaries were doubled in Indonesia in 2006-2015 as part of education reforms yet there was no change in the quality of their teaching.

Providing quality education entails complementary and transparent education management. The recent experience of Bangladesh has shown that a large part of the budget allocated to the education sector remains unused due to the lack of capacity of the bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, the administrative management somewhat collapsed due to the approval of new universities, widespread irregularities in the appointment of university teachers and VCs, corruption and factionalism.

In this situation, even increasing the budget will not bring any fundamental change in the education sector without improving the overall administrative and supervisory skills and accountability of the government in higher education management.

The British administration established the University of Calcutta or the University of Dhaka primarily to create trained civil servants to maintain colonial rule. Knowledge and research were secondary. How far our universities have come out of that colonial philosophy as our public universities are mainly producing BCS cadre so far?

Education, training and research are the three main pillars of university education. It is difficult to excel by ignoring one. But the reality of our universities is gross deficiency and neglect in all three areas. This was not the case when Dhaka University was established, as it was a political project of great significance for the British. The strategic aim was to produce “Brown Sahibs” who can run administration.

Historically Oxford and Cambridge universities have also led the way in civil servant training in the UK. Lists of senior and influential British civil service employees are dominated by students from both the institutions. Keeping this tradition in mind, in 1921, the journey of Dhaka University, popularly known as the Oxford of the East, began with an efficient administrator, academician and researcher like Sir Philip Joseph Hartog. Sir Hartog later left the post of vice chancellor to become a member of the Indian Civil Service, established in 1926. Historically, institutions of higher education excelled in their projects of creating civil servants. After 1947, Dhaka University was the factory for training CSP (Pakistan Civil Service) officers.

Apart from the university, the quality of other educational institutions established during the British period were better in terms of good governance and efficiency. This is one of the main reasons behind more participation in higher education in South Asia than in South-East Asia historically. But that excellence has lost in the passage of time. Many think, many universities in Bangladesh have turned into factories to produce unemployed graduates. During the tenure of the previous government competition to become bureaucrats increased mainly because of jobless growth and expansion of the administrative sector and increase of salary and allowances. The university authorities do not have any specific contribution.

Dhaka University’s physical infrastructure and residential hall system were formed in keeping with Oxford University’s academic model and architectural semblance, but there was no fundamental change in education curriculum. For example, PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economy) degrees in Oxford and ‘Tripos’ in Cambridge are popular for success in civil service entrance examinations. However, no public university in our country offers such an updated and innovative degree. This is why Dhaka University failed to keep its glorious past of providing efficient CSP officers. Trained cadres of today are questionable in different ways.

The civil servants of the past were dexterous and well trained on how to talk, run administration sidestepping political partiality or raise their voice against corruption. But our education system is failing to provide such dexterous, honest and uncompromising bureaucrats. Yet, the queue for the BSC aspirants is ever increasing in front of Dhaka University library.

This is a failure of the university administration, not any success. The space for knowledge and research has shrunk further due the students’ self-motivated training and unidirectional thought of “education for government jobs”.

How is the quality of research being conducted in public universities? There are numerous allegations of plagiarism and copying.

Our public universities are severely lagging behind in both the quality and quantity of research publications. Renowned institutions like the University of Oxford in the UK, Stanford University in the US, and the University of Tokyo in Japan are recognised as “world-class flagship institutions” due to their contributions and international reputation for quality research. The excellence of research in these institutions plays a crucial role in ensuring that students receive a world-class education. However, even after 53 years of independence, Bangladesh lacks a “world-class flagship university”.

The two main reasons for this are the recruitment of academically unqualified teachers and the research management is deeply corrupt.

The list of unethical practices is very long. Those are: plagiarism, copying, and the culture of “copy and paste”, along with publishing in international predatory journals or managing and publishing in university journals with favouritism.

Many fabricated articles are being published with the collaboration of authors, editors, and reviewers in a syndicate. This is compounded by mismanagement.

Universities are publishing thousands of journals on their own, none of which has any global recognition. There are no internationally established scholars on the editorial boards, nor are there any clear plagiarism policies or approvals from a “publication ethics committee”.

Most journals are not indexed in Scopus, meaning that these publications leave little impact on the global knowledge storehouse. Overall, what is happening in the name of research at universities resembles a farce, with no accountability. A significant portion of the faculty lacks verifiable research profiles (such as ORCID or Google Scholar pages). We see no distinction between the “white panel” (platform of pro-BNP and Jamaat teachers) and “blue panel” (platform of pro-Awami League teachers) factions in this nexus of corruption and irresponsibility.

How would you interpret the role of the University Grants Commission (UGC) as a regulatory body in this context?

A substantial part of the blame for our lagging in the research and higher education sector falls on the UGC. As a regulatory authority, it is responsible for setting standards, monitoring, verifying, and controlling quality in research.

However, for various reasons, the UGC has not played an effective role in those areas, nor has it provided the necessary guidance to establish “world-class flagship institutions”. The officials responsible for UGC’s administration seem to lack knowledge about innovative policies and planning in research administration on an international scale. Empowering the UGC, depoliticising its leadership, and promoting internationalisation are the demands of the time.

There is a lack of connection between higher education and employment in our country. The number of unemployed educated youth is relatively high, and there is a significant skills gap among them. What is the way to come out of this?

We are facing a major crisis in both youth unemployment and the unemployment of graduates. There is a substantial gap between our post-secondary education system and the required qualifications and expectations of the labour market. Many are saying we are producing more degree holders than needed. The main issue is that these degree holders are not supplying the skilled youth necessary for the job market. Every year, millions of young people enter the job market with a deficit in both hard and soft skills.

The kind of admission business happening in universities resulting in many unprepared youths being enrolled for higher education, and simultaneously, students are awarded degrees without quality and relevant education in the classroom.

Consequently, many universities have become factories for producing unskilled, educated unemployed individuals. To strengthen the connection between higher education and employment, we need to address the skills gap among educated youth. This requires a controlled expansion of quality education. Three areas need attention: providing quality undergraduate education alongside market-oriented vocational diplomas/certificates, reforming the labour force planning system, and regularly reviewing the recognition and approval of new degrees and universities and policies.

At the end of Hasina's government, the UGC made a policy decision to introduce PhD programmes in private universities. There are various opinions for and against this. How prepared are our private universities to launch PhD programmes?

The role of the private sector in higher education is undeniable. Private universities established in the 1990s provided safe and orderly environments for university education free from violence and session jams for the first time. To counter this alternative private model, public universities have made some positive changes to their physical infrastructure.

However, in terms of infrastructure, necessary faculty, and research capacity, there is currently no preparation in either public or private sectors to award internationally recognised PhD degrees.

Notable examples are former army chief Aziz Ahmed and former IGP Benazir Ahmed obtaining fake doctorate degrees from the Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP) in Dhaka.

Despite this, our public universities have been given an opportunity to offer PhD programmes unilaterally. Following this precedent, demands are made to introduce PhD programmes in private universities.

It is true that none of the existing private universities were established to provide research-based higher education or PhD degrees. With unregulated expansion, the number of universities in Bangladesh has now reached 155, many of which have questionable approvals.

In most cases, entrepreneurs are behind the establishment of private universities, primarily aiming to sell market-oriented certificates to recoup their investments. In terms of necessary faculty, many leading private universities are ahead of public ones. However, neither sector is fully qualified to offer PhD degrees in all aspects.

So it is time to rise above the debate of public versus private and initiate fundamental reforms in the higher education sector. We lack effective policies for establishing and regulating quality PhD programmes at the state level, and similarly, universities have not prioritised research degrees in their long-term strategic plans.

The practice of assuming that public universities will automatically have PhD programs, regardless of preparation and capacity, must end. We need a universal, clear policy that establishes criteria and indicators, allowing only research-oriented universities to be approved for launching PhD programmes.