Reforming higher education for growth

IN a developing nation like Bangladesh, economic growth is instrumental in fighting poverty and ensuring development. Bangladesh has been registering annual economic growth of more than 5 percent on average for the last two decades. This figure for a developing nation is commendable, if not impressive. But the ongoing global and domestic issues on food, energy, infrastructure, and law and order, have exposed a number of challenges that have cast shadows on Bangladesh's growth prospects. The country needs identify a priority sector that will be most effective for reform and growth.

I argue that higher education must be the priority sector. But it has remained unattended for various reasons, and now requires immediate repair to let the economy move forward. Reforms in other areas such as the judiciary and bureaucracy are expected to be easier once significant progress in this core sector has been achieved. As seen from the developmental experience of most emerging nations, higher education in particular can raise productivity by upgrading human capital.

The gross primary school enrolment rate in Bangladesh is around 90 percent, and secondary school enrolment has more than doubled since independence in 1971. However, similar progress has not been made at the higher levels. Since higher education institutions, that include almost 80 universities (21 public), can take only 10 percent of higher secondary graduates, there remains a serious bottleneck in the supply side of higher education.

Given the exponential growth of private universities, enrolment problem is likely to dissipate while quality will remain a core concern as before. Various studies by S.M. Aminuzzaman, M. Ehsan, M. Masum, and Y. Kitamura assert that the quality of higher education in Bangladesh has declined steadily over the last two decades. If Bangladeshi universities were to compete with western universities in this age of globalisation, they would see a massive lag in Bangladesh's educational standards. The quality of education in Bangladesh is much lower than that of India and even Pakistan.

Economists Bosworth and Collins (2003) measured the education-quality variable for 84 countries across the globe. In a scale between 72 to minus 12, while India and Sri Lanka score 20.8, Bangladesh earns only 2.8. Even Pakistan, a country often noted for excessive non-science, fanatical education, scores 11.3 in the same study.

The UNDP has developed education indices for 2008 based on adult literacy and gross enrolment. Bangladesh scored slightly higher than Pakistan (0.503 > 0.466) in the education index due to high primary enrolment. But lower education quality in Bangladesh in comparison to Pakistan could be a reason why Bangladesh is ranking lower (140) than Pakistan (136) in the Human Development Index 2008. India, with a higher education index (0.62) ranks 128 in the same list. More than 14 percent of total government expenditure is spent on education in Bangladesh. The corresponding figure is 11 percent in both India and Pakistan. While the government spending on education in Bangladesh is no less than that of India and Pakistan in percentage terms, the quality of education is.

The causes of this deterioration in educational quality are often rooted in student and teacher politics, faulty recruitment practices, the deficiency of research and scholarship, the lack of accountability of teachers, the absence of transparency in grading, and finally, poor governance. Excessive political zeal of a section of teachers is often manifested in grouping, lobbying, statements to the media, and even meetings and processions on campus. When teachers are involved in gaining undue privileges through politics, students cannot be blamed for doing the same thing. These activities are detrimental to maintaining a peaceful learning atmosphere of study, research, and scholarship.

The recruitment of teachers should be open, fair, and competitive to keep the universities abreast of the global standard. Indian and Pakistani universities, for instance, attend American job markets to select the best possible candidates. This is the first step needed to improve quality. Unfortunately, this practice has never been seen in Bangladeshi public universities. Rather, their recruitment process is designed to protect homemade products, and is often plagued by nepotism, gender-bias, political preferences, and racial discrimination. Those who have finished their master's program are generally hired as new teaching staff.

As A. Choudhury writes: "Universities in France, Egypt, Singapore, and China have recently made top-level hiring from abroad. Ominously, in Bangladesh's public universities, well connected political activists from among professors are still gracing important chairs (No more Oxford of the East, DS 10/7/08). As A.A. Khan rightly asserts, corruption in education is the root of all kinds of corruption, and it fuels corruption in other sectors (DS 4/26/08). Often, an obscure system, based on political connections rather than on merit, is used for recruitment and promotion. Hence, the quality of higher education remains sub-optimal, and even drops day by day, causing further misuse of national resources, the diversion of talent, and brain drain.

No system has ever developed without accountability. Under the current arrangement, public university teachers are not accountable to students for their performance and grading. The practice of students' evaluation of teachers, which is the key to the western pedagogical uplift, has never been applied to Bangladesh's public university professors either for their promotion or reappointment. As a result, negligence to curricula essentially leads to deterioration in pedagogy. Universities and departments along with teachers should be brought under a ranking system to promote competition and quality.

Education is the field from which all reforms should begin. It is the source of upgrading human capital needed for continuing growth in a society. Academic curricula, particularly in universities, must address the modern trends and future needs. Bangladeshi public universities seem to be unprepared for this commitment. Many of their subjects and curricula are obsolete and redundant, whereas many are missing from the viewpoint of science, technology, and business in the modern world. There hardly exists any linkage between public universities and the job market. Finally, the higher education institutions show a less than satisfactory track record in research. Reform must address these issues. Otherwise, the universities will not only fail to provide human capital for long run growth, but also aggravate the already bad problems of lower productivity and unemployment.

This writing draws from the essay: Challenges of the New Decade and Reforms for Growth in Bangladesh, presented at the Bangladesh Conference on Oct 9, 2009 at Harvard University. Dr. Biru Paksha Paul is Assistant Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Cortland, USA.