The dilemma of higher education

Easy availability of higher education has, ironically, turned out to be a big problem for our country. It has created an unemployment problem and the mismatch between the cost of education and the return has become a perennial problem. Graduates both from public and private universities suffer unemployment. At the same time, the mismatch between expectations and the actual number of jobs available is increasing sharply. People are spending higher to get higher education, but the return is not that much encouraging and often turns out to be negative, if the graduates remain unemployed. Recent empirical studies have shown that almost 10.31 per cent university graduates are unemployed. Overcoming this unemployment problem has become a big challenge.
The main problem is the easy availability of higher education. What do we mean by easy availability? Does it indicate the low cost of education? Obviously, education is something that cannot be fully explained by using the yardstick of price. By easy availability we mean the low quality of education and how low quality prompts people to get higher education even at higher prices. For example, if examinations and teachings in classes are such that they do not impose any rigorous qualification tests for students, then these graduates will fumble in the job market to get expected jobs while competing with others. The bitter truth is that maintenance of  quality is a rare case in most of the private universities in our country.
 QUALITY MATTERS NOT THE COST: Some people tend to explain easy availability of higher education in terms of the cost of education. They argue that people can get medical degrees, business degrees and even engineering degrees at low costs and the low cost of degrees begets the problem. This low cost argument does not make sense.
First, education is an opportunity that should be seized by all. The formal price parameter cannot be fully applied to the job of balancing the demand and supply sides of education.
Secondly, irrespective of the level of cost of higher education, availability of higher education can create problems, if it is not provided the way it should be provided. There are instances that students buy assignments from Nilkhet shops and get passed with that. In such cases, higher education is not apparently given by universities, but by third parties from whom students outsource their education. This is a trend of degeneration and curse too, because education has become a matter of business, not a means for social progress.
 Thirdly, if people think that the low cost of higher education is the real culprit for making the situation worse, then what can be suggested is an increase in the cost of higher education. Will it solve the problem? Not at all. Rather, it will make the problem much worse. The higher education will become a commodity that would be purchased by the rich people only. Moreover, the higher cost of higher education will reduce the demand for cheap but higher education driving down the number of people who want to get their access to higher education. At the same time, it will create the adverse selection effect.
The fall in the number of applicants from one side will be compensated by the increase in the number of applicants from another side. The result will be no change in the number of university graduates. Rather, the higher cost of higher education will produce much worse university graduates than low cost does now. Therefore, the argument that the low cost of higher education is creating a problem and increasing the cost of higher education will cure it hardly makes any sense.
VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION: Some tend to link the crisis of higher education and the crisis of unemployment to the lack of investment in vocational training and education. They blame it on the lack of initiatives in the area of vocational education and the lack of attention to vocational training and education. This is a deceptive argument, because it creates confusion between the supply push and the demand pull.
Some are complaining that the lack of attention and priority given to vocational and technical education is the real culprit for the large-scale unemployment of university graduates, as a large number of graduates are running after a limited number of jobs. So, the remedy lies in increased investment in vocational and technical education. In other words, the supply push will lead to the demand pull. This is the essence of this suggestion.
We can give a very realistic example of Saudi Arabia, which is facing a very tough time in fighting unemployment problem, to show how realistic this attempt would be. Despite the Saudi government's frantic efforts to popularise vocational education, little progress has been made in terms of statistics. The popularity of vocational and technical education has hardly increased and so is the number of graduates coming from vocational and technical education institutions. Several cultural factors have been held responsible for this kind of deadlock in Saudi Arabia, including the effect of lazy money from oil. People in Saudi Arabia are bound by several cultural factors such as the social prestige that make them shy away from technical and vocational
education.
Vocational and technical education is neglected in society. So, they do not enrol themselves for vocational education, though the government has taken significant steps to increase the number of graduates from vocational and technical education background. Therefore, the supply push in the form of government investment has failed to cause a demand pull or increase the number of vocational and technical education graduates in Saudi Arabia.
Now what about our country? Can the supply push cause a demand pull or increase the number of vocational and technical education graduates? We can argue that the result of the supply push will be exactly same as it is for Saudi Arabia, though the factors behind the result can be totally different for Bangladesh. The supply push for education is not exactly same as is the case with the supply push for other commodities in the market.
For example, a proportionate increase in production of all goods would definitely cause a demand pull in terms of consumption and investment. But increasing investment and expenditure in vocational and technical education does not ensure that the demand for these types of education will increase. It is not the supply push that works. Rather, it is the supply contraction that works. Supply contraction for education has a totally different connotation. It means a tighter control on the quality of education. This is what we need in our country. It is important for policy makers and planners to keep in mind that the easy availability of business education will ruin the remaining hope for popularising vocational and technical education.
A similar problem is there in the USA too. This kind of crisis is mostly generated by the hype created by business education and the prospect for easy earnings. The gradual decline in popularity of science education is attributed to the hype of business education. But the USA has managed to cope with the problem by adopting different measures such as higher level entrepreneurial activities and higher growth of small and medium enterprises. People in the US do not hanker after jobs only; they set up their own small businesses even after graduating from universities.
This trend is missing in our country. Setting up small and medium enterprises not only involves capital for running business but also kickbacks for political goons and a section of corrupt officials at government offices. The impending danger is that though the USA has been able to manage the slide in popularity of science education and the influx of business graduates by putting thrust on entrepreneurship and a higher level of business activities, we cannot hope that the same thing will happen in our country.
The gradual influx of business graduates here will cause a deep trouble for us.  On one hand, it will erode the popularity of science education diminishing the chance of vocational and technical education. On the other hand, the number of unemployed business graduates will increase over time, because the job market will get overcrowded with too many job-seekers.
The contributor writes from the University of Denver, USA.
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