The government鈥檚 policy focused on rapid growth in the number of universities and graduates that has been pursued for a decade and the training programmes for less educated young people with foreign loans, as 抖阴精品 reported on November 8, appear to have failed to meet the target. This is because, in both cases, increased enrolment has been high on the agenda whilst the quality of education and training has been relegated to a secondary consideration or has not been considered at all. And what has come up in the process is that most of the graduates from mushrooming public and private universities keep failing to pass employment tests because of a skills gap. Yet, training programmes for skills development, mostly limited to less than three months, have failed to create the competence needed whilst many are alleged to be enrolling on the programmes supported by the government mostly for the allowances rather than the development of skills. Bangladesh now grapples with an increasing rate of unemployed graduates at 13.5 per cent, the highest among all education levels, as the Labour Force Survey 2024 shows. The rate has more than doubled in eight years.
Experts observe that private universities run by businesses, politicians and former bureaucrats have used higher education to sell certificates whilst the regulatory authorities remain permissive towards the proposition. And, young people have in the process continued to fall victim to the unethical practice. The number of public and private universities has more than doubled, from 82 to 172 in a decade and a half 鈥� the number of private universities having increased to 116 in 2025 from 56 in 2010 and public universities to 56 in 2025 from 36 in 2010. And all the universities together produce about three-quarters of a million graduates every year for the job market, but many of them cannot pass the employment tests. The government has, meanwhile, borrowed about $1 billion in 2010鈥�2021 to run skills development programmes under ministries and non-governmental organisations, but the effectiveness of the skills programmes has now been seriously questioned. The government has implemented the Skills for Industry Competitiveness and Innovation Programme since 2023, and now the Asian Development Bank is putting in $300 million in loans and the government $75 million to complete the programme by June 2029.
It is, therefore, time that the government reworked its higher education policy for an optimal use of its investment in tertiary education. A limited number of graduates, aided by increased spending, could be a good option rather than to mass-produce graduates without the competence needed for employment. But the government, for now, should attend to the issues of improving the quality of higher education in universities and skills development programmes and running the institutions with the required earnestness.
