A TEACHER from Dhaka University of Engineering and Technology recently said that his high school headmaster had stopped talking to him after his admission into a polytechnic institute in the 1980s. The headmaster started talking to him only after he was admitted into a bachelor’s engineering programme at DUET.
In 2024, a grade-10 student said that he would have studied diploma engineering if there had been a way to study at Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology after the diploma.
These two snippets are enough to attest to the marginalisation of diploma engineering degrees in Bangladesh. Diploma students have demanded a separate ministry for technical and higher education. However, without a clear pathway to BUET, will the establishment of an exclusive ministry or universities for diploma graduates solve the problem?
Addressing the century-old marginalisation of diploma engineering lies in creating a pathway for students like the grade-10 student above to study at BUET through a diploma and fulfil their aspirations and dreams.
The current diploma engineering cannot create high aspirations and dreams among diploma students. Most of them consider the diploma in engineering a terminal degree which can bring them at best second-class jobs in the public or private sector. Only a few graduates can enter more prestigious jobs at home or overseas, fighting against many odds.
At the beginning of human civilisation, education was mainly the technical and vocational (including business) type. Before and during the Mughal era, the education system in India was largely community-based, with a strong focus on socially embedded technical and vocational education and training. This system played a significant role in vocational education by transmitting skills from teachers (ustads) to their students (shagrids). During the British colonial rule, the colonisers devocationalised education and divided society along diverse lines. They implanted an inferiority complex among the natives in economic, religious, political, cultural and educational terms to perpetuate their rule. They gradually replaced Indian traditional technical and vocational education with liberal English-medium education to create a sycophant middle class, a huge consumer base for their industrial products, and some clerks and civil servants for ruling the natives.
As the Muslims were ousted from power, the British rulers favoured Hindus. They flourished more than the Muslims under the colonial favour. After the partition of Bengal in 1905, the Hindus became enraged against the British. Diploma engineering was introduced in British India, including Bangladesh, during this time as a nationalist movement against the British modern liberal education system, which was non-technical.
Sensing imminent disadvantage at the partition, the dominant Hindu society mobilised a Hindu nationalist, anticolonial and anti-partition movement. Through active collaboration and engagement with the British rulers, the Hindu community gradually developed a strong holistic philosophy of education linking it with social, cultural and religious legacies. They introduced diploma courses to empower the youth in the first decade of the twentieth century and successfully integrated them into mainstream university education. Presently, diploma engineers can enrol in second-year bachelor’s degree programmes in elite universities in India.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Muslims were antagonised by the Hindu nationalist, anti-partition, anti-Muslim, and anticolonial movement. After the annulment of the partition of Bengal in 1911, they felt betrayed by the Hindus, which led to the emergence of the Muslim nationalist movement and the establishment of the Muslim League in 1906. However, due to the historical alienation of Muslims from the British, the Muslim society lagged behind Hindus in educational and cultural terms. Muslims could not develop their nationalist philosophy, bridging their social, cultural and religious legacies. They constructed an ad hoc philosophy, borrowing features from Islam, colonial British culture and dominant Hindu culture without resolving the inherent conflicts and tensions between these worldviews. On one hand, they opposed the anti-partition movement of the Hindu society. On the other, they resorted to highly influential Hindu scholars such as Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. Similarly, unlike Hindu nationalists, Muslim nationalists could not construct a long-term, future-orientated philosophy of national education.
Diploma education followed a rather circuitous route in Bangladesh. When the Hindus introduced diploma courses in Calcutta in 1908, Muslims did it at Ahsan Ullah Engineering School in Dhaka, pursuing an ad hoc philosophy of education around the same time. However, the diploma has not been integrated into mainstream university education in Bangladesh since engineering education flourished at the bachelor’s degree level more than seven decades ago following the positive humanistic ethos of the Indian philosophy of ‘national education’.
The diploma was terminated from the engineering school in 1958, a few years after its transformation into an engineering college in 1947. During the era of global divide between communism and capitalism after World War II, diploma education was reintroduced as a marginalised training system through the establishment of Dhaka Polytechnic Institute (then East Pakistan Polytechnic Institute, Dacca) in 1955 with the United States of America’s technical assistance provided by the Ford Foundation and Oklahoma State University. This initiative aligned with president Harry S Truman’s Point Four Programme to contain communism, promote capitalism, and protect American strategic interests.
Around the early 1900s, there were debates regarding terminal vocational education and humanistic vocational education with links to higher education in the USA. By the 1930s, it was established that ‘if the junior college [with major focus on vocational education] was to succeed in the American cultural and political context, then it needed to be linked to higher education’ (p. 4, Community Colleges in America: A Historical Perspective by Richard L Drury). Accordingly, two-year junior colleges (now community colleges) were given a clear organisational structure as part of higher education after completion of higher secondary education in a ‘6-3-3-2’ grade-level plan with opportunities to transfer to four-year bachelor’s degree programmes in colleges and universities.Ìý
American educators understood that for global competitiveness they needed post-grade-12 vocational education at the university level and that no education subsystem could succeed without links to higher education. There is no evidence that the same message was conveyed to Pakistan by the American technical assistance. It was ironical that despite the engagement of Oklahoma State University, polytechnics were not modelled after American community colleges, which are comprehensive, as they provide both liberal and vocational two-year degrees with pathways to four-year bachelor’s degrees at the university.
Considering the short-term interest of the industry, polytechnics were created as marginalised silos providing only terminal degrees without any connection to higher education, which was bound to hinder human flourishing and ‘fail’ in the political, economic and social context of Pakistan. The existing grade level plan was 5-3-2-2-4 including a four-year bachelor of engineering. The concept of the three-year diploma was introduced and significantly expanded across Pakistan with support from international partners, including the US Government, UNDP and World Bank. However, it was implemented without a thorough examination of its alignment with the existing two-year higher secondary education system, its articulation with the four-year bachelor’s degree programme in engineering, or the development of a coherent grade-level structure and organisational placement for polytechnic institutions within the broader educational framework.
In Bangladesh, there is still a remnant of historical marginalisation of diploma education, while India and Pakistan have made some tangible progress in ways to integrate diploma engineering into mainstream education. The three-year duration of the diploma has been retained in both India and Pakistan. However, in Bangladesh, it has been increased to four years, which has created more gaps between general education and diploma engineering. In Pakistan, diploma students can seek admission to general universities just like other higher secondary graduates. In India, diploma students and bachelor’s degree graduates with mathematics can get admitted into the second year of bachelor’s degree engineering programmes in general universities. There is no exclusive university for diploma graduates. After completing Diploma Engineering, diploma graduates merge with mainstream education. In India, diploma engineers initially become senior technicians, then associate member technologists and member technologists of the Institute of Engineers (India). But in Bangladesh, diploma engineers cannot become members of IEB. They have created a rival professional organisation called IDEB. Diploma graduates cannot study in general technological universities due to the loss of two extra years in education for diploma certificates compared to HSC education.
To address this marginalisation, consensus among diverse stakeholders is essential. A simple but practical solution is promising, which may garner considerable appreciation or at least appeasement of most stakeholders. Presently, madrasahh students can compete for admission to BUET and other prestigious universities. HSC (Vocational) students can also do the same. However, diploma students remain excluded from this opportunity. The BTEB can solve the problem easily by introducing an extra certification system to the diploma programme. Presently, it issues diploma certificates to diploma students at the end of the four-year course. What it can do is arrange a public examination at the end of two years of diploma courses in the name of HSC (technical/diploma), similar to BTEB’s other examination called HSC (Vocational). Alternatively, it may issue similar certificates based on its existing assessment system. Based on this certificate, after successful completion of two years of diploma education, competent diploma students can compete with general students for admission to BUET and other general universities. If this can be done, we would not need special universities or an exclusive ministry for diploma education. The reforms will help diploma students to flourish like other students in the country. They will no longer need to take to the streets with new demands for human flourishing and wellbeing.
If the said examination is introduced, diploma students get the opportunity to study in general universities, and diploma and bachelor engineers and their rival organisations will gradually be more cohesive and respectful of one another. Engineering education will not further diverge along diploma and bachelor engineering lines but rather converge and contribute towards developing an integrated education for all. This will hopefully end the discrimination and bring justice and solidarity.
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Noor Mohammad Masum is a PhD candidate in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is an officer on special duty (deputy secretary) at the ministry of public administration (currently on deputation).Ìý
