Creating high-value jobs

Different studies indicate that Bangladesh has been suffering from increasing unemployment among the graduates of engineering and technical education and depressed salaries for fresh graduates. Such a job market reality has compelled graduates from B.Sc engineering programmes to seek jobs at the 9th and 10th grades, which used to be allocated for diploma degree holders graduating from polytechnic institutions. Consequently, a confrontational situation has emerged, compelling the government to step in. Besides, such a reality raises questions about our belief that technology education is highly relevant in the age of rapid progression of technology and the positive correlation between progress in human capital and economic prosperity. Furthermore, Bangladesh's apparent failure to leverage engineering education creates questions about sustaining economic growth, beyond low-skilled labour and loan-centric infrastructure accumulation through giving contracts to foreign firms. Therefore, it has become essential to look into the root causes and to figure out a scalable solution for creating high-value jobs and driving economic growth by leveraging engineering education.

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION-BASED DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY-MAKING ENGINEERING COMPETENCE IRRELEVANT: To operate surveying instruments and conduct land surveys, Bangladesh's engineering education started in 1876 as the Dacca Survey School. Subsequently, the school's programme was upgraded to a diploma in technical education to take care of the construction and maintenance of roads, canals, bridges, and other civil infrastructures, and offer support services for adopting imported technologies. Unfortunately, although Dacca Survey School was upgraded to Ahsanullah Engineering College and started offering B.Sc engineering programme in 1948, the purpose of engineering education remained the same-offering technology selection, procurement, installation, operation, and maintenance. Besides, despite the focus on developing an industrial economy after the colonial period, the focus has remained the same, even to date. On the other hand, by following top-ranking global universities, Bangladesh has been expanding engineering education in terms of both the number of graduates and the level of degrees. Unfortunately, due to increasing automation and modular design, both complexity and scale of maintenance have been shrinking, resulting in making lower-level technical competence good enough. Consequently, science, mathematics and theory of technology centric engineering education has become increasingly irrelevant to Bangladesh's technology adoption-based development agenda.

LEVERAGING ENGINEERING EDUCATION DEMANDS GRADUATION FROM TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION TO ADVANCEMENT: One of the notable successes of Bangladesh's engineering education has been that its graduates are good candidates to pursue higher studies in universities in North America and other advanced countries. Ironically, their competence has become irrelevant to the local job market due to Bangladesh's technology-import-centric development strategy and policy. Such a reality demands that we focus on finding the relevance of engineering education to high-value job creation in driving economic growth. Besides, instead of just believing in human capital theory and terming engineering human capital as an exogenous factor contributing to economic growth, we should be aware of the clear linkage. As recent endogenous economic growth theories explain, ideas for advancing technologies for improving products and production processes are significant sources of productivity gain of material, energy, labour, and other production inputs-leading to higher performance of firms and economies. Besides, ideas are scalable, offering endless growth opportunities. Furthermore, highly science- and mathematics-centric engineering education empowers graduates to play a role in idea production instead of performing, repairing, and maintaining jobs. Hence, to create high-value jobs to drive economic growth, Bangladesh faces the urgency of migrating from technology adoption to advancement to improve the quality and reduce the cost of products and processes by engaging local engineering graduates in R&D.

CREATING THE DEMAND AND IMPROVING THE SUPPLY OF ENGINEERING GRADUATES, FOR JOB CREATION THROUGH ECONOMIC GROWTH: Among others, three essential policy barriers are (i) Bangladesh's decision of giving contracts of technology centric major infrastructure projects to foreign firms, (ii) pursuing capital machinery import centric and incentives-based import substitution and export-oriented manufacturing, (iii) offering subsidies and tax differentials to offset competitiveness of farming and other sectors, and (iv) scaling up academic programmes due to belief in human capital and economic growth theories. As a result, Bangladesh government has created a less challenging path for developing infrastructure, and the private sector has found an easy profit-making opportunity. Hence, both the government and the private sectors have been shying away from increasing local value addition through ideas by engaging engineering graduates in R&D. On the other hand, engineering academic institutions are in a race to follow global curricula without having any focus on how to prepare graduates to add value by driving the evolution of products and processes. Therefore, these policies need to be changed to create the demand for engineering graduates in R&D to drive the evolution of products and processes to be in the global race.

As explained, during the last 75 years, despite the expansion of engineering education in both breadth and depth and economic growth out of technology adoption-centric policies, Bangladesh's engineering education has become increasingly irrelevant to the local job market. Besides, along with the growing job crisis, Bangladesh has been missing the opportunity to drive economic growth further through product and process innovation by engaging those graduates in R&D. Unfortunately, over the decades, Bangladesh has created significant policy barriers that must be overcome to address two critical issues: higher economic growth and creating high-value jobs for engineering graduates.

M. Rokonuzzaman, Ph.D is academic and researcher on technology, innovation, and policy. Zaman.rokon.bd@gmail.com