Professional education in Bangladesh

In the last decade, the professional education industry in Bangladesh has generated a high amount of interest ofinvestors, due to the rapid development evident in many sectors as well as the arrival of different multinational companies.
Professional education includes any programme that improves the knowledge, skills, attitude, or behaviors of pursuers at the workplace. This industry can be divided into three major categories:
* Accredited programmes
* Non accredited programs: Diploma and
* Non accredited programs: Training and workshops
Professional education is knowledge blended with experience as many professional certifications need the completion of a certain period of articleship or on the job experience.
Accredited programmes require three to four years of completion time. The tuition providers for accredited programmes such as ACCA, CIMA etc are known as quality partners of ACCA/ CIMA. Bangladesh provides two types of tuition packages: bundled package pricing versus individual (per paper) pricing to the students. These tuition providers take the largest segment of revenue of the total industry. Some of their learning partners, such as LCBS, offer diversified product lines i.e. tuition in CIMA, ACCA, CIPFA and many short term trainings. They mainly have online marketing strategies, such as website advertisement partner of the LCBS leaves a cookie to the site visitors' browser and therethe visitor is catered with the online ads of LCBS during his/her visit to other sites. Besides, the big tuition providers also arrange campaigns and hosts job fairs in the universities. They try to implement selling strategies efficiently at every customer contact points. They also offer extended service to their students through job placement facilities.
The non accredited programmes are offered by both nonprofit and for profit organisations. For example Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) offers Management in Banking (MBM), and Bangladesh Institute of Human Resource Management (BIHRM) offers Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management (PGDHRM). When the institution is the sole provider of the degree by virtue of a privilege given by the government, they have the potential to earn good amount of revenue.
The trainings and workshops are led by a variety of institutions, both small and big in size. The key players are bdjobs and Prothomalo-jobs. While the former has the highest number of Information Technology based training, the later conducts most of its trainings in Human Resource Development and Soft Skills Development. From June 2014, Prothomalo-jobs has started organising trainings and short courses in its Chittagong premises also.
Brand value of the institutions providing professional education plays an important role in attracting students. LCBS, an ACCA tuition provider in Bangladesh with the Advanced Learning Partner - PLATINUM certification, attracts a large number of students in the Foundation level (entry level in ACCA) due to their strong brand value. A similar situation is observed for  the Management Development Programme offered at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) - University of Dhaka. IBA, despite offering a small number of different courses, is able to attract professionals due to the strong brand value associated with being the premier business school in Bangladesh.
Most of the students pursuing different professional trainings are professionals who get enrolled in the programme individually or through the Human Resource department of their respective institutions. Hence, it becomes quintessential for the suppliers to maintain liaisons with the corporate houses. They, with a few exceptions, not only offer in-house trainingbut also conduct training on the premises of the big corporate houses.
Over the years industry trends show that the major component of success in the professional education industry is a strong partnership with global and national governing bodies, corporations and firms.ACCA Bangladeshis primarily concerned with raising awareness of the professional degree. It provides newspaper ads making one of its quality learning partners as the venue. These types of marketing tools give enough drive to its registered tuition providers for attaining commercial success. On the other hand, having a parent concern also provides immense leverage to the service/ training providers in terms of sharing joint costs and enriching client base.Prothomalo-jobs andbdjobs are both endowed with these advantages.
The cost structure of the institutions widely differs. However, the major cost of all institutions is trainers' fees and promotional expenses. The non-profit organisations such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) and The Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh (ICMAB) receive a substantial amount of government subsidy, and are the sole providers of their respective products in Bangladesh. They do not take part in wide promotional endeavor. They have different vision and mission than the rest of the professional education providers.
When the overall scenario of the various categories in the professional education industry is considered over the last three years, a trend emerges showing a steady growth in revenue and enrollment. Therefore, the professional education industry is likely to expand in future. It has enough scope of vertical integration with the corporations and is powered by the education inflation faced by 21st century. Our government can give major incentive to this industry by providing lenient VAT policies solely for it. The organisations have heavy online presence and some have options to pay online which is also promoting e-commerce in our country. Many a times the websites suffer from malware attacks. For their safe operations, internet security needs to be enhanced at the national level.

Masud Ul Haq and Farzana Afrin are doing MBA at  the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) of Dhaka University, email:[email protected] and [email protected]