Education must meet emerging industries' needs

There is no gainsaying the fact that a nation's real wealth is its skilled manpower with the youth playing the central role. But have all the graduate-degree-holder youths of the country been able to contribute desirably to become the nation's wealth? To answer the question, one needs to look into the overall picture of our youth workforce. Approximately 2.0 million people that enter Bangladesh's job market annually, 30 to 35 per cent constitutes the youth with general graduate degrees. But the majority of these educated youths lack the skills to be absorbed in the private sector industries.
So, there is a disconnect between tertiary education provided by the higher educational institutions and what the industry needs. But then can't the vocational certificate providing polytechnic and diploma institutes of the country meet industrial needs? Unfortunately, the machinery in use to train students in those institutions is found to be decades-old. But modern industries require proficiency in advanced systems like Computer Numerical Control (CNC). Evidently, it has created a paradox where employers struggle to find qualified candidates while hundreds of thousands of the educated youths remain jobless. The challenge is to re-skill this talent pool to contribute meaningfully to society and the economy. These issues regarding the employability of the nation's educated youths again came up for deliberation at an event where speakers provided their valuable inputs. Notably, the event in question was styled, 'Technical Career Fair 2026' and held recently in the city. As expected, the focus of the occasion was how better Bangladesh can prepare its graduates by aggressively bridging the skill gap between academia and the industry. Interestingly, some renewable energy groups that participated in the said career fair informed that they would prioritise candidates with strong academic basics so that the recruits might be trained after hiring. The expo also reportedly aimed to recruit over 2,000 professionals, specifically targeting 'gray-collar' and skilled vocational workers. Here the 'gray-collar' jobs falls in the middle ground between the traditional white-collar (management staff) and the 'blue-collar' (manual labour) jobs. These hybrid professions combine hands-on physical work with specialised technical skills and typically require vocational training or certifications rather than four-year college degree. But these isolated cases of recruitment are to inspire the educated youth to make themselves job-market-worthy. Also, the suggestions some experts made at the event include learning third languages alongside the vocational training to get overseas jobs. Here comes the responsibility of the policymakers to overhaul the system of education that are creating the graduates and make millions of youths employable locally as well as globally. Therefore, it is time, the educational curriculum was revamped to aggressively promote technical education which covers Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). That is about aligning the workforce development with the demands of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and emerging green sectors.
In that case, the strategies to enhance graduate employability should include modernisation of the curriculum. That involves shifting away from rote learning to the competency-based one. At the same time, the tertiary learning institutions should embed soft-skills into their core degree programmes. Notably, the soft skills involve communication, critical thinking, problem solving and adaptability. The next important step as part of the curriculum overhauling would be to bridge the industry-academia disconnect by institutionalising practical work placements and apprenticeships during the undergraduate years. Step by step, the graduates should prepare themselves for the borderless digital economy. In that case, the government should invest heavily in vocational and technical education and upgrade its manpower strategy to create highly skilled certified professionals aimed at meeting the needs of the local as well as global job market. Also, the education system should nurture job-creation rather than job-seeking and to that end, the enterprising youths' access to seed funding, incubation centres and mentorship programmes have to be ensured.