Bangladesh should open more research-based universities
Bangladesh should start working on creating universities solely focused on research as these have a leading role in building the nation and crafting national strategies, said Brac University Vice Chancellor Prof Syed Saad Andaleeb yesterday.
World-class institutions emphasise research, harbour a culture of shared values and practices and a climate of high morale and spirit of innovation, have a safe home for testing those, encourage mentoring and collaborative networks and provide adequate resource and multiple forms of communication, he said.
Prof Andaleeb was giving a keynote presentation on inaugurating the first International Conference on Business and Management (ICBM) 2017, at the Westin Dhaka.
Organised by Brac Business School (BBS), the two-day conference held the theme of global contemporary practices in business and management and participation of academics from prominent universities such as those of Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and the USA.
He cited the example of California where the first tier of research universities have faculty members who are expected to just create knowledge and who pass sleepless nights to get their works into reputed journals at the year's end.
The national education policy for 2010 of Bangladesh espouses the need for quality research for finding solutions to problems of the state but there is a general lack of interest among teachers to conduct research, he said.
Asian universities are considered as the next higher education superpowers with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong already in the competition for research supremacy with policies designed to promote world-class universities, he said.
Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently announced that an enabling regulatory architecture would be provided to 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world-class teaching and research institutions, he said.
Similarly, the Malaysian government upgraded four institutions into research universities to participate in international competitions, the vice chancellor said while advocating for a symbiotic relationship between academia and industry.
On financing, he said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an annual budget of $3.5 billion, 90 percent of it comes from some form of research and the rest from tuition.
In this regard, he talked of an interesting conundrum for budgetary allocations being taken up by consulting firms which then turn to academia for the actual work.
BBS Dean Prof Iftekhar Ghani Chowdhury gave a speech chairing the inaugural session and he highlighted the pivotal role such conferences play in enhancing knowledge dissemination and improving the quality of academia.
Another keynote presentation came in a session chaired by Prof Dr Mirza Azizul Islam and Professor Dr Salehuddin Ahmed of BBS.
Prof Dr Mark GOH of the business school of National University of Singapore (NUS) spoke on cutting edge and emerging technologies and the ways which are shaping the contemporary businesses and supply chains.
He also spoke about future research avenues and briefly discussed the research potential offered by areas such as human-machine interactions, economics of supply chain and cryptocurrencies.
Prof Dr Premkumar Rajagopal, vice chancellor of Malaysia University of Science & Technology, and Dr Pairach Piboonrungroj, associate dean of the College of Maritime Studies and Manage-ment, Chiang Mai University, gave another two keynote presentations.
Prof Rajagopal broached the critical roles played by smart data and other advanced technologies in enhancing supply chain responsiveness.
He discussed the four stages of industrial revolution and the importance of the current one defined as Industry 4.0.
Dr Piboonrungroj talked on how supply chain worked in the present era and offered a debate on whether to go for globalisation or deglobalisation in this context.
The conference will continue with over 150 academic papers to be presented in multiple parallel sessions and talks.
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