Higher education for creating jobs

Upon attaining low-middle-income status, countries like Bangladesh have been emphasising the importance of higher education. The underlying thesis has been that such investment will create economic value out of knowledge and ideas, creating high-paying jobs. Economic growth will consequently prevail, helping these countries sustain or accelerate progress to reaching high-income status. But in this journey, they have already started suffering from growing unemployment among university graduates. The predominant underlying cause has been the growing gap between industry and academia. Hence, frequently cited prescription has been job-based academic curricula in higher education. But if we align higher education with the industry's current state in low-middle countries like Bangladesh, will we succeed in creating high-paying jobs out of knowledge and ideas? If that does not happen, how will these countries sustain economic growth, reaching high-income status? These two questions lead to the next one-how to leverage higher education through industrialization to create jobs and drive prosperity?

In recent times, Bloomberg reported that India has been suffering from "worthless degrees." The unemployable growing number of degree holders has been impeding development progression. Highly likely, India alone has not been suffering from this burning problem. According to some reports, as high as 50 per cent of university graduates in Bangladesh do not find jobs within three years of graduation. On the other hand, the employment rate among high-school dropouts is meagre. Hence, the higher the education, the lower the job prospect has been a growing reality in these countries. Furthermore, the salary difference between fresh university graduates and high-school dropouts has been eroding, reaching almost zero. Despite the ever-increasing supply of graduates and unemployment among them, the issue of skill gap raised by the industry has been getting louder.

To find the remedy to the prevailing situation, should we align higher education curricula to meet the industry's skill requirement? To answer this question, should we look into value addition pursued by the industry? We should also look into how universities in Bangladesh and low-middle-income countries have been preparing and updating their academic programmes.

The success of graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to low middle income has been due to the commercialisation of labour. Remittance and industry development for import substitution, processing locally available natural resources, and export-oriented manufacturing have driven economic growth, helping these countries graduate from the LDC group. So far, most of these countries, including Bangladesh, have imported capital machinery and product ideas and added value through local labour and natural resources. Hence, public policy instruments and management practices of the industry favour a skilled labour force. But the unfolding reality has been creating adverse effects on this current capacity.

First of all, the mandate of higher education is to empower graduates to produce knowledge and ideas. On the other hand, due to increasing automation, role of local knowledge and ideas in creating economic value from imported capital machinery, intermediate products and design ideas have been eroding. As a result, there has been a growing gap between industry and academia. To overcome it, should we downgrade higher education to develop vocational skills required by the industry for operating imported capital machinery and production processes? If we do it, what would be the long-term outcome? First, we will not succeed in expanding economic growth by leveraging knowledge and ideas. As a result, long-run economic growth will slow down, and these countries will prematurely suffer from growth stagnation. On the other hand, due to decreasing role of labour in industry value add, the industry will not be able to scale up growth momentum. Hence, aligning higher education towards the current state of the local industry of Bangladesh or many other less developed countries will end up in meeting unpleasant reality-steady erosion of development progression.

What could be the remedy for strengthening the industry and driving long-run economic growth by leveraging higher education? Perhaps, we should draw lessons from other countries. Some notable countries are Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the USA, Canada, and the UK. In the 1960s, there were hardly any jobs for Ph.D. holders in the Taiwanese and South Korean industry. Similarly, before 1899, there were more or less no jobs in the USA for systematic knowledge and ideas for driving the industry's growth. Japan, too, was no exception.

Invariably, universities of Bangladesh and many other less developed countries have been following the academic curricula of reputed universities of the USA and other advanced countries. But has the industry been creating jobs for US university graduates? Or, are universities in charge of driving industry growth out of their knowledge and ideas, creating jobs for their graduates? In retrospect, USA's reputed universities are on the mission of creating high-paying jobs. Often cited economic clusters have spun off from universities-creating the demand for university graduates to create a flow of knowledge and ideas. Such success has been vital for the economic growth of those countries, making them advanced.

To create high-paying jobs to drive economic growth for higher income status, it is time for Bangladesh and other less developed countries to change the mandate of higher education. In addition to producing graduates by following the curricula of globally reputed universities, increasingly education institutions should take responsibility for creating jobs for creating economic value out of the knowledge and ideas they are sharing with their students. It's not feasible for the labour-intensive current state of the industry to develop knowledge and idea jobs for university graduates. Instead, universities should lead the process of creating an industrial economy out of their graduates' knowledge and idea production capacities. Unless we change the mandate, less developed countries will keep failing to leverage higher education to drive economic growth. In the worst case, increasing investment in higher education may turn out to be a liability, even barrier to growth.

M. Rokonuzzaman, Ph.D is academic and researcher on Technology, Innovation and Policy. [email protected]