Academic curricula, jobs and growth – how to correlate?

We have been investing in education with the hope of building a better tomorrow. We expect graduates to be eligible for high-paying jobs than those who do not pursue education. Hence, once we face the growing number of jobless graduates, academic curricula becomes the improvement target. How do we establish a correlation between curricula and the expected performance of the graduates? Besides, how do we figure out which changes are appropriate to accept?

Furthermore, is academic curriculum advancement enough to create jobs and drive growth? For example, as Bangladesh has been paying billions of dollars to foreign engineers and technicians to design and build infrastructures like metro rail, power plants, bridges, highways, and telecom networks, will the necessary improvement of engineering curricula create jobs for graduates? Unfortunately, any amount of advancement of curriculum will not make it happen, as long as we keep pursuing the strategy of importing proven solutions through offering turn-key contracts to foreign firms.

To clarify the issue further, let's look at additional examples. Over the last 25 years, it is observed that the salary difference between primary school dropouts and fresh university graduates in Bangladesh has shrunk from twenty times to close to two. For example, in 2000, a fresh engineering graduate used to start a job in the private sector with a monthly salary of BDT 10,000. During that time, the monthly wage of a domestic maid used to be BDT 500 for eight hours of work. As of 2024, the average salary of a fresh engineering graduate is around BDT 25,000. On the other hand, many households in Dhaka have been paying over BDT 12,000 for domestic helps. Besides, unlike domestic helps, university graduates remain unemployed for many months after graduation. Well, one may raise questions about the quality of education.

Over the last 25 years, significant advancement has been made in updating engineering curricula, laboratory establishment, and faculty qualifications. Most of them have been following the curricula of top universities of the world in compliance with the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the Board of Accreditation for Engineering & Technical Education (BAETE). Due to this success, as reported in the media, BAETE, under the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh (IEB), became a full signatory to the Washington Accord on June 12, 2024, retroactively effective from June 2023. Furthermore, despite the gloomy performance in the domestic job market, a growing number of engineering graduates from Bangladeshi universities are finding jobs in globally reputed technology companies like Google directly from Bangladesh and are finding admission to reputed foreign universities.

Although Bangladesh has been facing the reality of shrinking salary differences between fresh university graduates and primary school dropouts, the USA and many other advanced countries have been experiencing the opposite scenario. Does this scenario particularly apply to Bangladesh? Perhaps, no. In India, as many as 80 per cent of engineering graduates fail to get engineering jobs, as reported by the media. On the other hand, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics Report of 2022, 41 per cent of the youth are neither working nor studying. If we delve further, we may find that most of them residing in this cohort are high-school, college, and university graduates. Furthermore, according to a survey, Tracer Study on Graduates of Tertiary-Level Colleges, released in September 2021 by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), as high as 66 per cent of National University (NU) graduates remain unemployed as their subjects and skills do not often match the criteria set by private sector employers.

Let's now look into the growth issue. Undoubtedly, there has been significant increase in graduate production. However, such growth has created the impression of "Over Supply of Graduates and Dissatisfied Employers" in Bangladesh. The challenge is to ensure an appropriate use of the competence of these graduates in boosting economic growth. In addition to improving the knowledge and skills of graduates through curriculum advancement, we also need to enhance the efficiency level of the private firms and the government to derive value from the graduates' knowledge and the capacity to innovate. Suppose the government keeps pursuing the policy of importing major engineering solutions from foreign contractors, how will the quality improvement of engineering education by complying with ABET or BAETE and securing membership in the Washington Accord make Bangladeshi graduates eligible for designing, building, and innovating jobs?

On the other hand, due to automation, the scope of adding value through domestically produced knowledge and ideas has been narrowing in replicating goods and services. Hence, if the private sector keeps pursuing replication-based productive activities and the government keeps incentivising them, will they not keep finding the competence of graduates increasingly irrelevant? For example, despite the rapid revenue growth, most telcom companies in Bangladesh have reduced their engineering headcount. As the government is allowing it, they are finding it more profitable to import equipment to produce service than add value to their technology by engaging local graduates. Besides, if startups are in a race to capture the market of primitive minimum viable products (MVP) through subsidies and the government keeps allowing and funding such market-distorting exercises, why should they engage graduates to produce knowledge and ideas for improving the quality and reducing the cost of their MVPs? On the other hand, if the academic community remains in the race to follow curricula of top foreign universities and gain higher positions in global ranking through publishing follow-up works of foreign professors, how will it make their graduates more eligible to drive the growth of the local industry?

Of course, we need to improve the academic curricula. However, to have a strong correlation between curricula, jobs, and growth, we must first focus on our objective of education. Here are four primary objectives dominating the education system of Bangladesh now: (1) offering education to all as a fundamental right for building better human beings, (2) making graduates eligible for securing government jobs, (3) qualifying graduates for getting jobs both at home and abroad for driving economic growth, and (4) becoming eligible for pursuing graduate studies in foreign universities. We also expect Bangladeshi universities to keep gaining better positions in global rankings. Often, such objectives are found to be contradictory.

If we do not upgrade our strategy and policy in constructing infrastructure and building the private sector, the correlation between curricula, jobs, and growth will suffer further. Hence, to leverage students' potential, we must focus on the objective of education and strategy and policy for development through locally produced knowledge and ideas so that the correlation between academic curricula, jobs, and growth keeps getting stronger. Furthermore, to derive benefits from curricula, there is a significant need to develop ethics, empathy, responsibility, rational expectation, dedication, patriotism, long-term consequential thinking, and passion for perfection among our students, faculty members and all other stakeholders.

M. Rokonuzzaman, Ph.D is academic and researcher on technology, innovation, and policy. [email protected]