Reforming higher education in Bangladesh

Bangladesh secured major development gains since independence, reflected in rising per capita income growing, substantial reduction in poverty rates and significant improvements in human capital. Yet, this progress was accompanied by growing income inequality and inadequate attention to social justice. Additionally, macroeconomic stability and gross domestic product (growth) have been threatened since FY2020 by a series of external shocks including Covid-19 and economic mismanagement. GDP growth, investment and exports are on a declining trend and unemployment/ underemployment especially of youths and college graduates have emerged as major concerns. Labour Force Surveys show that employment in the manufacturing sector has stagnated showing zero growth between 2016 and 2022, excluding selected high-skill services, the average incomes in agriculture and services are very low. The employment problem has now become a major social and political issue.

With the fall of the previous government, efforts are now underway to stabilise the macroeconomy and restore the growth momentum. The ongoing economic transformation of Bangladesh away from agriculture and the rural economy to modern manufacturing and organized services will need to gain speed in the coming years in order to restore the growth momentum and for Bangladesh to compete effectively in the global market in areas other than readymade garments (RMG). Even the RMG sector is transforming rapidly from low-skill labour intensive production to capital, technology and high-skill intensive production process. The skills base needed for this transforming economy-wide production process is not readily available.

While Bangladesh faces many challenges in rapidly adapting to ongoing technological changes in the global production processes related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the human capital task is particularly intense given the present low levels of education and skill attainments of the labour force. This challenge in turn has substantial implications for developing the higher education, technology, science and research and innovation capabilities of Bangladesh as it prepares for its journey transit from a lower middle income country (LMIC) to Upper Middle Income Country (UMIC) and eventually to High Income Country (HIC) status.

Despite past progress with education, Bangladesh faces major challenges on both the quantity and quality fronts. While the quantitative progress in primary and secondary education is commendable, gross enrolment in tertiary education has reached only 17 per cent. The quality issues are pervasive at all levels of education. The daunting challenge of this weak progress with higher education is reflected in the education profile of the work force. According to the latest available Labour Force Survey 2022 (LFS 2022), some 32 per cent of the labour force had only primary education, 50 per cent had secondary education, 8 per cent had higher secondary education, and 8 per cent had tertiary education. This education profile of the workforce is not consistent with the skills need of an UMIC. Digging deeper, research shows that in addition to low education attainments, there are major issues with the quality of education and the skills level of the workforce.

Major Issues and Constraints in Higher Education: Against the backdrop of the development context above, the main objective of this article is to identify the major constraints to the development of the higher education system and provide suggestions for specific policy actions that would help address these constraints. The analysis presented in this paper is based on Bangladesh and global experiences and suggests that the quantitative and qualitative challenges in the higher education sector can be organized under 5 themes: (1) quality and relevance; (2) research and innovation; (3) inclusiveness; (4) regulatory environment and governance; and (5) education finance.

Quality and Relevance. The low quality of higher education is reflected in several quality indicators including low international rankings of Bangladeshi universities, low global rankings in ICT, R&D and innovation, and weak job-market relevance. Global university rankings put Bangladesh in the bottom 25 per cent of the universities ranked. Tracer studies show high unemployment rates for university graduates even after 1-2 years of graduation. Employer feedback suggests graduates lack many job market-relevant skills, suggesting a disconnect between education and job market skills. Many of the skills in demand relate to education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects. Yet, in FY2019, Bangladesh had a mere 11.2 per cent tertiary enrolment in STEM subjects, which is among the bottom 15 per cent of countries ranked. Pedagogy is excessively focused on class notes and textbooks instead of case studies, problem solving and practical experience. The university quality problems are exacerbated by low quality at entry form lower levels of education. A general shortage of resources has reduced the university enrolment capacity, especially in STEM subjects. Financing constraints have lowered education quality by restricting university research capabilities, by reducing the availability and quality of teachers, and by lowering access to high-quality teaching materials and teaching aids including ICT facilities. Absence of international connectivity with teaching and research, weak accreditation standards and absence of internal quality mechanisms compound the quality problems.

Research and Innovation. The Global Innovation Index (GII) ranked Bangladesh innovation performance at 116 out of 131 in 2019 (bottom 11 per cent). The reason for this low ranking is weak performance in several areas. First, Bangladesh is ranked poorly in terms of the readiness of the higher education system to support research and innovation, reflected in low tertiary enrolment, low enrolment in STEM subjects, and low inward mobility of trained graduates. Second, Bangladesh spends very little on research and development (R&D) – only 0.2 per cent of GDP as compared with 2.2 per cent in China and 4.3 per cent in Korea. Third, despite progress, the ICT readiness that is critical for higher education quality as well as research and innovation is weak compared to competitors. The percent of population that have access to ICT is a mere 34 per cent as compared with 88 per cent in Korea, 75 per cent in Malaysia, 62 per cent in China, 56 per cent in Thailand, and 54 per cent in Indonesia and Vietnam. There is an even wider gap in use of ICT. Only 22 per cent of the Bangladeshi population use ICT as compared with 89 per cent in Korea, 65 per cent in China and Malaysia, 60 per cent in Thailand, 55 per cent in Vietnam and 42 per cent in Indonesia. Third the availability of knowledge workers is a huge problem: Bangladesh was ranked at 118 (bottom 10 per cent) by GII in 2019. Fourth, there is near absence of industry and university research coordination, with Bangladesh ranked at 121 (bottom 8 per cent) by GII in 2019. A key policy constraint to the use of ICT in Bangladesh is the high ICT taxation that lowers demand by raising cost and reduces incentive for greater private investment in ICT infrastructure and services.

Inclusiveness of Higher Education. Bangladesh higher education faces considerable inclusiveness issues reflected in low female enrolment and weak equity of higher education. While progress has been made in narrowing the gender gap in university education, the female enrolment rate reached 36 per cent in 2019 suggesting there is still ways to go to reach parity. The equity challenges are much deeper. Available evidence suggests that owing to low per capita income, rising income inequality and inadequate financial support for needy students, only 10 per cent of public university students belong to the bottom 40 per cent of the income distribution group, whereas 65 per cent belong to the top 20 per cent of the income distribution. This not only limits enrolment, but it also suggests that most of the benefits of highly subsidised public university education goes to the rich.

University Regulatory Environment and Governance. Bangladesh gets high marks for establishing an enabling university regulatory environment that has opened up private investment in university education and largely explains the rapid expansion in university enrolment from a low of 40.2 thousand in 1984 to 650.2 thousand in 2019 (excluding Bangladesh Open University). Bangladesh also has sought to provide autonomy to the university system by establishing the University Grants Commission (UGC) as an independent body to finance public universities and regulate both public and private universities. However, evidence shows that a number of major challenges have emerged in the area of university governance that have constrained the development of the higher education in Bangladesh. First, University education involves the role of 4 key ministries: The Ministry of Education (MoE); the Ministry of Health (MoH); the Ministry of Science and Technology (Most) and the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology (MoPTIT). Yet, there is no formal inter-ministerial coordination mechanism, which reduces the efficiency of government spending on university and constrains the development of research and innovation capabilities. Second, the capacities of UGC have not grown in line with its responsibilities. In particular, the accreditation functions suffered. In 2017 a new Accreditation Council was established, but it is not yet fully functional. The UGC capability in the area of development of the university research is a huge constraint. Third, while the government has sought to give full autonomy to UGC and universities, through the control over the appointments of the UGC chair and board members, and the Vice Chancellor of universities, the government continues to exert considerable influence over decision making in the UGC and the public universities. Fourth, the public university administration, teaching body and students are highly politicized creating serious loss of efficiency and productivity through a range of channels including selection of teachers and students, university security issues, and teaching and exam disruptions from hartals and other inter-student conflicts. Finally, questions have also been raised about unethical practices in public university teacher and student selections that have hurt the quality of education.

Severe University Financing Constraint. Inadequacy of university funding is a huge constraint to the expansion of enrolment and quality enhancement in public universities. Some 95 per cent of public university funding comes from the government budget. At a mere 2 per cent of GDP, total public spending on education is amongst the lowest in the developing world. The share of university education in total education budget has been increasing recently, but still amounts to a mere 0.3 per cent of GDP. There is negligible funding for research owing to the very low R&D spending noted above. While private universities have the flexibility to raise funding through tuition and fees, public universities are restricted by government control. Also, there is no strategy to use innovative financing used in other countries including property income, endowments, alumni fund raising, family tax incentives, a system of low-cost student loans, etc.

Policy Reforms in Higher Education: Higher education reform efforts have been piece meal and further constrained by weak implementation capacity. A strategic plan to reform higher education was adopted in 2006 by the UGC covering the periods 2006-2026. This was followed by the adoption of National Education Policy 2010. The 2006 strategic plan was modified in 2018 and converted to a revised 12-year higher education reform strategic plan 2018-2030.

Implementation progress has been halting and limited in most areas including financing, quality assurance, and governance. So, the journey ahead is steep. Some of the important reform priorities are listed below.

Strengthening the Quality and Job Market Relevance of Higher Education. The specific reforms include:

• Ensuring quality at entry: Sustained progress for upgrading the quality of higher education and developing the skills base of the labour force will require addressing education quality issues at the primary, secondary and higher secondary levels. In particular, top priority needs to be given to eliminating drop-out rates in primary and secondary education and ensuring a minimum of 12years of education for all. The Eighth Five Year Plan (8FYP) identifies some important policies and programs to enhance quality of primary and secondary education, but little implementation progress has been made. A top policy priority would be todraw on that strategy, add further reforms as needed and strengthen the national education quality at the primary and secondary levels as essential inputs to increase the quality of higher education.

• Enhancing enrolment in STEM subjects: The proposed target is to increase graduate enrolment in STEM subjects from 11.2 per cent in FY2019 to 20 per cent in FY2025, 30 per cent in FY2030 and 40 per cent in FY2035. Several specific actions can be taken to implement this. First, the government should fast-track its ongoing program to establish new STEM universities. The focus should be to identify core areas where expansion is most relevant to the needs of the economy and the labor market. Several obvious candidates are engineering; computer science; medical science; the textile research; the pharmaceutical studies; and agriculture research. Second, emphasis should be given to upgrading STEM capacities in existing universities. Third, Bangladesh STEM-related universities lack international recognition owing to quality issues. New investments could pick up promising universities, such as the BUET, for upgradation with a time-bound target for achieving higher international ranking. Fourth, the R&D development plan discussed below could be used to provide incentives to public and private STEM programs to excel and expand. Finally, incentives could be provided for students through special scholarships that are only available for studies in high-priority STEM subjects.

• Greater emphasis to problem solving and practical training: The pedagogy should complement classroom lectures and textbooks with problem solving case studies method, group projects, field visits, internships, and other approaches that relate education to real life issues in business, industry and services sector.

• Enhancing ICT education: In 2012 the government launched the Master Plan for ICT in Education in Bangladesh 2012-2021. A 2019 review report shows that while some progress was made in the area of ICT penetration in education, there is still a large unfinished agenda. An important reform would be to review and revise the existing Master Plan for ICT to reflect the changing national priorities and implement this plan. Another important reform would be to make ICT education a part of core education competency, same as language, science and maths. For graduate students, special short-term summer courses may be introduced as a pre-requisite for pursuing university education. All teachers must also go through refresher training on the basics of ICT including technology-based lectures, lecture notes, exams, conference calls etc. A taskforce should be established to provide concrete suggestions on how to proceed in this area with concrete timelines for progress.

• Strengthening the research and publications focus of universities: The global university rankings give very low score to Bangladeshi universities on research and publications. Along with higher resources for research, teacher recruitment and career growth must be strongly linked to demonstrated teaching and research capabilities and publications in peer-reviewed national and international journals. The practice of sabbatical should be introduced for senior teaching staff to enable them to pursue approved full-time research. University course work should be combined with research papers as a part of graduation requirement to encourage students to develop research capabilities early on. Effort should be made to upgrade university capabilities to award doctoral degrees, which will help in upgrading research capabilities.

• Mobilizing foreign student enrolment: A major way to strengthen quality of education is to establish formal links with well-regarded international universities. There are several ways this could be done including course-specific student exchange programs, teacher exchange programs through sabbaticals, online lectures, joint research, and joint degrees in selected subjects. ICT solutions could be used to simplify and reduce the transaction costs of these collaborative efforts.

• Using utmost care and selectivity in recruiting university teachers: Teacher selection in public universities should be completely depoliticized and done on the basis of degrees from top international universities and demonstrated teaching and research capabilities. In private universities, the Accreditation Council should certify quality of teaching staff and minimum teacher / student ratios. Retention of quality teaching staff can be facilitated by enabling research opportunities including sabbaticals, by providing career growth opportunities based on research, publication and teaching excellence, allowing exit of teachers who do not demonstrate research and publication skills, and allowing cross-fertilisation of ideas through exchange programs with international universities.

• Ensuring sound implementation of the Accreditation Council: The independent Accreditation Council of 2017 needs to be implemented well by ensuring adequate resources for establishing and implementing quality certification of new universities. The independence of the Council from political and vested interest pressure is critical to the quality of the certification process. To ensure transparency and objectivity, the certification system must be objective and based on measurable and verifiable criteria. The accreditation system should follow internationally accepted principles in implementing the system. The certification process must be well defined and published on the website of the Accreditation Council.

• Ramping up quality assurance mechanism at the institution level: Universities must establish an adequate internal quality assurance mechanism. These internal quality assurance cells (IQAC) can be based on self-assessment by students and teachers on the quality of education being provided, the prevailing learning environment and options for improvement. The assessment process must be externally peer reviewed to ensure the transparency and objectivity of the process and used only as instruments for university development with no penalty for truthful feedback.

Strengthening Research and Innovation. The proposed reforms in this area comprise of the following:

• Establishing a national R&D strategy: This should be a top priority for MoST. A team of experts from MoST, the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology, the Bangladesh Medical University, the Dhaka University, Ministry of Education, representatives from private university, and representatives from the private industrial houses could be tasked with the responsibility for drafting the R&D strategy for Bangladesh. The team could equip themselves by learning from the global leaders in R&D including China, Korea, Germany and the USA. LMIC experience can be obtained from India, which also has a good R&D strategy.

• Providing adequate funding for R&D: The suggested target for public R&D annual funding is to increase from 0.2 per cent of GDP in FY2019 to 1 per cent in FY2025, 1.5 per cent in FY2030 and 2 per cent in FY2035. This is a minimum target as this will still be lower than Korea and China who spend 4.3 per cent and 2.2 per cent of GDP on R&D respectively.

• Establishing university and business coordination in R&D: In order to ensure that R&D resources are effectively deployed and yield the desired development outcomes, the government must establish a sound collaboration mechanism between universities and business. The universities would provide the scientific inputs to the research, while business would convert this research into marketable products through inputs on the production technology, cost and productivity aspects of the research. Better university and business collaboration could also provide incentives for greater private funding of research. Private funding is often constrained by the absence of quality research staff and skills. The universities can meet this gap. Patenting laws need to be strengthened, and their implementation ensured to protect the business interest of the R&D investing firm.

• Establishing a sound institutional mechanism for R&D grant allocations: To ensure efficient and productive use of the R&D funds for advanced research conducted by universities, Bangladesh will need to establish a sound institution that is autonomous and can administer the resources in a transparent and orderly manner based on established principles that are known to all potential beneficiaries through the website of that institution. International experience can provide useful insight into how this might be done. One highly regarded institution is the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the USA. The government could establish a Bangladesh National Science Foundation (BNSF). Other relevant country experiences from Korea, Germany, UK and France might also provide useful insights for designing the right institution.

• Lowering ICT taxation: The high taxation of ICT must be reduced to comparable levels found in high-performance ICT countries like China, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia to facilitate higher demand and supply of ICT services.

• Facilitating the digitization of university education: The UGC has partnered with the Bangladesh Education and Research Network (BdREN) to speed up the digitization process of university education and promote on-line education. But many constraints remain including the BdREN’s capacity to meet the growth in demand, availability of ICT equipment for teachers and students, quality of internet connectivity, internet connectivity in rural areas, and affordability of ICT services for students. The government should build on this progress and provide more resources to BdREN. Bangladesh could also consider introducing policies that have helped university on-line education in other countries. These include: providing cost-free or near zero-cost internet access to students; allocating specific amounts of bandwidth to prioritize education related activities; provide unlimited data access to university students; providing dedicated funds to connect universities to the internet; set up free public Wi-fi access points; establish online learning courses consortium-marketplace; digitise all education contents including library resources; and set up regulations to allow credit for online courses and its portability across universities.

• Improving access to PCs for university students: The UGC pilot program to buy smart phone through interest-free loans for low-income students should be expanded to include purchase of laptops. Students who avail this opportunity should be required to show proof of purchase. Misuse of this facility would entail appropriate disciplinary action.

Enhancing the Inclusiveness of Higher Education. The required reforms relate to increasing the equity of higher education and increasing female enrolment. Specific actions include:

• Sharply increase the volume of needs-based scholarships for universities: The government should sharply increase the number of needs-based university scholarships targeted to the qualifying students belonging to the families of the bottom 40 per cent of the income distribution group and make them available to eligible students in both public and private universities. The information about these scholarships should be disseminated through a public information campaign and website postings that are easily accessible.

• Provide low-cost student loans to all eligible university students: Funding constraint may limit the ability to finance all eligible students of the bottom 40 per cent of the income group through scholarships. To address this, scholarships may be combined with low-cost student loans. The system should be open to all eligible university students, public or private, who meet the eligibility criteria. The student loan program could be designed based on good practice international experience and the available budget resources for the interest subsidy.

• Increase the share of low-income family students in private universities: Private universities already are required under the law to enrol a certain share of students from low-income families. This should be monitored carefully and increased as practicably possible by the UGC. Access to government-funded scholarships and subsidized student loans will also help enroll more students from low income families in private universities.

• Strengthen implementation of women protection laws: A part of the reform agenda is economy wide and is linked to eliminating the remaining social biases against women. The two most important steps are first to fully enforce the government’s child marriage laws with zero tolerance for violations; and second to fully implement all laws that are aimed at preventing violence against women.

• Eliminate workplace gender biases: To strengthen the incentives for more female university enrolment, the workplace environment will need to be substantially improved. The government has to legislate policies that eliminate all biases against women concerning recruitment, pay and career growth. Also important is the need to ensure a female-friendly work environment that is free of all kinds of harassment, provide separate toilet facilities for women, provide access to day care facilities, reasonable work hours, and flexible online work options on a need’s basis.

• Strengthen female university scholarship programs: The effort to enroll more children from families in the bottom 40 per cent of the income distribution can be used to also target greater female enrolment by providing them preferential access. This could be instrumental in improving both equity and female enrolment.

Strengthening the University Regulatory Environment and University Governance. The main reforms in these areas include

• Enact an Umbrella Law for all public universities: The UGC has long recommended the enactment of an Umbrella Law to bring all public universities under a common regulatory framework. The government should set up a task force of experts along with staff from UGC and the Law Ministry to study the various legal framework for each public university, check specific issues and concerns that emerge, and provide a recommendation to the Education Ministry for appropriate follow up action.

• Establish an Inter-Ministerial Higher Education Coordination Council: There are various ways this coordination can be ensured. One possible mechanism would be to have an Inter-ministerial Higher Education Coordination Council (IMHECC) comprising of the 4 concerned ministers (MoE, MoST, MoH; and MoPTIT), the concerned secretaries, the secretaries of finance and planning ministries, and the chairman of UGC. The IMHECC will be chaired by the Minister of Education and secretarial support provided by the UGC. The IMHECC should meet on a regular basis, preferably at least once every 2 months, with a well-defined agenda and recorded minutes that are shared with all universities.

• Strengthen the UGC: As the premier university education administrative unit, the UGC role needs substantial strengthening to meet the growing challenges of an expanding university system. The most important reform to strengthen UGC is the proposal to convert the UGC into an autonomous Higher Education Commission (HEC). This is not just a change in name but calls for a substantial overhaul of the UGC. The speedy establishment of the HEC will be a major institutional reform to boost the capacity of the university education system.

• Selection of CEOs of UGC and universities: CEO appointments for UGC and its members and the CEOs of universities are high-level professional positions and require strong leadership skills, proven administrative capabilities and demonstrated highest level of integrity. The government should maintain the highest standards of integrity in the selection process and look for Bangladeshi talents both home and abroad. Political considerations including party affiliation must not enter as a factor in these appointments. To avoid politicization, the selection process for these critical positions must be done on a transparent and objective basis by establishing a high-level selection committee and by putting the selection criteria upfront using measurable indicators. The selection committee should be headed by the Minister of Education and include three eminent educationalists and two well-known representatives from the private sector. The selection criteria must be put on the website of the Ministry of Education and the UGC. Any candidate belonging to a political party must be automatically barred from selection.

• Improving public university governance: Depoliticisation of public universities is essential to upgrade the higher education. This will require a ban on student politics linked with political party affiliation and strong administrative capabilities of the university under the leadership of a respected and competent CEO. By implication, the university administration itself must be depoliticized and that will only be possible if the UGC leadership and the university CEO are both depoliticized through the adoption of proper selection process as noted above. All universities should be fully autonomous with no role for government intervention in the selection of university staff.

Resolving the University Financing Constraint. The ability to meet the ambitious higher education enrolment targets and quality improvements will require substantial increase in resources for university education. Specific policy reforms include:

• Increase government funding for university education: Despite considerable public pressure, public spending on education remains low at around 2 per cent of GDP. A huge policy challenge is to increase this spending. A phased approach is necessary given revenue constraints, which must be speedily addressed. One approach would be to target public education financing to increase from 2 per cent of GDP presently to 3.5 per cent by FY2030 and then rise to 4.0 per cent of GDP by FY2035. This level of financing will have to be shared strategically throughout the education system. The suggested level of government financing for university education calls for an increase from 0.3 per cent of GDP in FY2020 to 1.0 per cent in FY2025, 1.2 per cent in FY2030 and 1.5 per cent of GDP by FY2035. These are minimum level of funding needed to expand university enrolment and enhance quality at the public university level. This spending will be separate from research grants funded through the R&D and administered by the proposed Bangladesh National Science Foundation. Private universities can similarly benefit from government-funded research grants.

• Increasing the beneficiary contribution in higher education: Presently the public universities raise only 5 per cent of their total resources from student tuition and fee. Moving forward it would be appropriate to target the share of university spending financed from tuition and fee to grow from 5 per cent now to 15 per cent by FY2030, 25 per cent by FY2035, and 30 per cent by FY2040. This should be both politically and financially feasible, because as per capita income grows the ability to pay for families will rise commensurately. Needs- based scholarships and low-cost student loans will provide flexible funding options for low-income groups.

• Fiscal incentives for university education: Presently all universities are exempt from income taxes and VAT. This is appropriate. Student scholarships and loan subsidies funded through the budget are another important fiscal incentive that needs expansion. To promote university enrolment, many countries offer tax incentives to parents. Bangladesh may also consider providing tax credits for university education. The mechanism can be developed based on good practice international experience.

• Innovative financing options: Global experience shows that universities in UMICs and HICs raise substantial resources from own investments, from private endowments, and from alumni funding drives. There are examples of limited such resource mobilization from private universities in Bangladesh, but it is almost non-existent for public universities. UGC should develop a policy to facilitate these types of resource mobilization for both private and public universities. Full accountability for these resources will need to be ensured.

Reform Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation: A successful implementation plan requires a well-thought monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system designed to measure progress and identify problems and issues. The M&E system must be focused on results that are measurable / quantifiable to show concrete evidence of progress. A simple M&E framework for the next 5 years could be adopted initially, which can be further developed as implementation progress is made. The M&E Framework should be updated on a 5-year cycle as progress is made. This task should be assigned to the UGC that would provide secretarial support to the proposed Inter-ministerial Higher Education Coordination Council (IMHECC). The M&E report should be prepared on an annual cycle. The progress report should measure progress made, identify areas of concern and suggest remedial actions as necessary including the need to reassess the realism of the proposed result. The progress report should be reviewed by the IMHECC and take appropriate actions. The report should be shared with the cabinet and put on the UGC website for public information.

Dr Sadiq Ahmed is an economist and vice-chairman of Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI). [email protected]