Special report of Economist Intelligence Unit report for the British Council, January 2014, 47% graduates in Bangladesh are unemployed whereas employers struggle to find suitable university graduates, while university graduates don’t pair with skills in demand. Why? Is it teaching or learning gap or the curriculum is inadequate to meet the workplace requirement or quality of education.
At present, there are 122 universities in the country. Of those, 83 are private universities, 37 public universities and two international universities and 100 more private universities are in pipeline awaiting for approval. Unfortunately the quality of education is the least concerned it is not about quality counts it is all about head count. Private universities are interested more in business than expansion of education and improvement of its quality. It is alleged that the private universities are running “certificate business” instead of giving importance to quality education. Some of the universities are even accused of selling certificates which is very alarming and the same time students graduate without minimum quality to meet the work place requirements.
Most of the private universities are cashing in with students coming from suburbs and rural areas who does not have basic knowledge of how professional work place works. With growing number of students, the number of experienced faculties are inadequate and the recruitment of inexperienced faculties making the tertiary education more and more vulnerable.
Private universities are into little research or no research at all regarding the present day job market whether on-shore or off-shore and despite positive employment growth and higher university participation, there is a paradox of high graduate unemployment and the reason for such a huge number of graduate unemployment is, they do not have the set of employability skills required for the job market, the education is still into lectured based theory memorizing rather than empowering the students into self-learning and problem solving and critical thinking.
