Students' contribution to economy

Bangladesh is a developing country with millions of young bloods. With approximately 5.0 million university students in Bangladesh, their impact on the economy is more than we realise. Apart from paying tuition fees, let us talk about the earnings from part-time jobs, freelancing, tuition and small businesses which numerous students are engaged in. Thus many of them are trying to survive in this fluctuating economy. It is a common trend among university students to take on tuition and earn from BDT 5,000-15,000 every month. Some are even making more than BDT 20,000 from providing tuition. Whilst some do part time jobs in IT and other small firms in small roles which they get exploited more often with less payment than they deserve because of their undergraduate status.

Nowadays, a significant number of students have started their small online businesses like Clothing brands, makeup and skin care retails, print on demand services, cake and bakery businesses and so on, which open a lot of scopes and generate handsome amounts of revenues. These small home-grown businesses are increasing at the right pace ensuring solvency of the concerned students. These students are holding the capacity to pay their own university tuition fees and also meet their regular expenses by doing so. Freelancing has also been a common way of income for lots of students who are skillful.

Remote jobs or contractual jobs like video editing, website design, data entry, social media marketing are a few high paying jobs performed by students via platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. The concept of students not working and only focusing on their academic performance is vanishing day by day. The students are becoming more independent and aware of real-life experiences and its value. It's high time the parents emphasize on motivating and guiding their children into jumping into the real world and making it normalised for a student to work besides focusing on their education.

Mahiul Islam Tilak

Student

North South University