The government policy targeting a rapid growth in the number of universities as well as graduates in the past one decade and its training programme for less educated youths with about $1 billion foreign loan have backfired.
The multilateral lenders-supported training programme since 2010 have fallen short of targets as priority was given mostly to enrolment on the training programme instead of ensuring quality while most of the graduates from mushrooming public and private universities fail to pass job tests because of their skills gap, said academics and employers.
The country is now grappling with the rising rate of unemployed graduates at 13.5 per cent, the highest among all education levels, according to the Labour Force Survey 2024.
The rate more than doubled over the past eight years. The survey put the country鈥檚 overall unemployment rate at 3.66 per cent.
KAS Murshid, former director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said that the country鈥檚 education sector and the job market had been manipulated.
He observed that the country鈥檚 private universities, run by businesses, politicians and former bureaucrats, had turned the higher education into a mere certificate selling business under the nose of the government regulatory body and youths had been the ultimate victims of the unethical practice.
The number of public and private universities became more than double to聽 172 in 2025 from 82 in 2010.
The number of private universities stands at 116 from 56 while that of public universities 56 from 36 in the same period.
About seven lakh graduates are coming out of the universities every year, but many of them cannot pass job tests by employers while a significant portion of highly paid, technical and managerial posts in the country鈥檚 billion-dollar readymade garment sector and the other manufacturing sectors have been held by foreigners.
Bangladesh Knitwear Manufactures and Exporters Association president Mohammad Hatem, however, said that the presence of foreign experts in the knitwear factories was negligible.
Blaming too much focus on theoretical studies at the universities, Hatem said that most of the university graduates lacked practical knowledge about merchandise, factory operation and banking.
BKMEA members operating about 2,540 factories, account for exports worth $21.15 billion out of overall $48.28 billion exports in the 2024-25 financial year.
Campaign for Popular Education executive director Rasheda K Chowdhury said that the two state-run higher studies entities 鈥� National University and Open University 鈥� were producing a huge of number of graduates every year.
Questions have mainly been raised about these university graduates, she said.
Calling the overall job market trend alarming for a nation to be graduated from the least developed country bloc on November 24, 2026, Rasheda, also a former caretaker government adviser, said that both the public and private universities should consult with employers to prepare their curricula to meet the market needs.
The Dhaka University鈥檚 Institute of Education and Research teacher, professor MD Ali Zinnah, said that a process had been started to revise the curricula for higher studies by consulting with the businesses and the other stakeholders.
He hoped that university graduates would not face the current problem in the coming decades.
Mustafa K Mujeri, executive director of the Institute for Inclusive Finance and Development, however, said many of these youths would not have pursued costly higher education had there been modern vocational centres with courses ensuring decent jobs.
The government has borrowed about $1 billion between 2010-2021 to run skills development programme under different ministries and non-governmental organisations although the private and public technical training institutes have been struggling to meet the market demand.
On May 19, 2014, the Asian Development Bank gave $350 million loan to the government of Bangladesh to scale up skills training for 1.25 million young workers.
The loan from the ADB was part of the government鈥檚 Skills for Employment Investment Programme with estimated cost of $1.07 billion and the fund was spent by 2021.
Besides the ADB loan, Bangladesh government contributed about $200 million to the programme, $30 million was received from the government of Switzerland, $400 million from the other lenders and $90 million from the private sector.
Overseen by the finance ministry and other relevant ministries, such as the posts, telecommunications and information technology ministry and the youth and sports ministry, the effectiveness of the skills programme is doubtful.
Analysing trainings given to youths under the skills development programme, the Task Force Report on Re-strategising the Economy and Mobilising Resources for Equitable and Sustainable Development said that most of these skills development training sessions were very short, lasting less than three months.
Moreover, there is a concern that many trainees enrol on the government-supported programme mainly to receive trainee allowances rather than to genuinely develop their skills, said the report.
Since 2023, the Bangladesh government with the support of the ADB have been implementing a fresh scheme named Skills for Industry Competitiveness and Innovation Programme.
The Manila-based lender is giving $300 million and the Bangladesh government $75 million to complete the programme by June 2029.
KAS Murshid who led a group of economists to prepare the Task Force Report on Re-strategising the Economy and Mobilising Resources for Equitable and Sustainable Development said that the government should bring about changes in the teaching methods at the private and public technical training institutes to make the technical course more attractive to students who are unwilling to pursue higher studies.
He said that the government should improve the technical institutions by initiating reforms in the curriculum amid growing unemployment as the number of decent jobs has not grown with the average six per cent growth in the country鈥檚 gross domestic product over the past one decade.
The government jobs cover only over 5 per cent of the total jobs and the informal sector remains a dominant player in employment with about 85 per cent, while about 20 lakh to 22 lakh people enter the job market every year.
In recent years, about 10 lakh Bangladeshis have been seeking overseas jobs, mainly in the Middle East, but they are low paid compared with the workers from other countries because of skills gap and language inefficiency.
The inflow of remittance was $30.33 billion in the 2024-25 financial year, a 27 per cent increase over 2023-2024. But the amount could have been much higher had the overseas job seekers acquired sufficient technical skills, said academics.
