WHEN the National University was established in 1992, its purpose was noble— to decentralise higher education and extend its reach to the corners of the country. It was meant to democratise access, to ensure that students from rural and semi-urban areas could pursue higher education without being confined to a few elite campuses in Dhaka, Rajshahi, or Chittagong. More than three decades later, that dream is facing a quiet but severe erosion. Behind the impressive statistics of enrolment and affiliation lies a crisis of quality, planning, and purpose—a crisis that now reveals itself most starkly through empty classrooms and unclaimed seats.
According to the latest figures, about 71.79 per cent of students pursuing higher education in public institutions are studying in colleges affiliated with the National University. It is, by far, the largest higher education network in the country. Yet, year after year, hundreds of thousands of seats remain vacant. In the 2023–24 academic year alone, 436,285 seats were offered for undergraduate (honours) admission across 881 affiliated colleges, while another 421,990 were available for degree (pass) courses in 1,969 colleges. Despite this massive capacity, the University Grants Commission reported that more than three lakh seats went unfilled.
The vacancy trend tells an even deeper story of decline. In 2014, nearly 68,000 seats were vacant in the NU system. By 2018, the number had ballooned to over 3.4 lakh. In the following years, it fluctuated but remained persistently high — 2.2 lakh in 2020, nearly 4 lakh in 2021, and over 3.1 lakh again in 2023. In some district-level colleges, one in every three seats remains empty. Colleges in Satkhira, Kurigram, and other mofussal districts struggle to fill even half of their available seats.
The reasons behind this chronic under-enrolment are multi-layered. On the surface, demographic change and competition from private universities play a role. But at the core lies a more systemic ailment — the proliferation of colleges without planning or quality control, driven by political interference rather than academic necessity. The result has been a network of institutions uneven in capacity, under-resourced, and unable to attract or retain students, particularly in the sciences and commerce streams.
In many rural colleges, the pattern is predictable: the humanities departments overflow, while science and business faculties struggle to fill even half their seats. In Bhaluka or Kaliganj, for example, dozens of seats in physics, management, or Islamic studies remain unclaimed while humanities continues to dominate enrolment. This imbalance reflects not just student preference but a deeper problem in the education pipeline. At the secondary level, the sciences have steadily lost ground. Laboratories remain neglected, qualified teachers are scarce, and rural schools lack incentives to maintain robust science programmes. Consequently, fewer students qualify or feel confident to pursue science at the tertiary level, leading to an overconcentration in humanities, which in turn saturates the job market.
The structural expansion of NU has also been largely detached from labour market realities. As the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies found in 2024, nearly 28.24 per cent of NU graduates remain unemployed, with most others working in low-income or mismatched jobs. Among them, those graduating in political science, library management, history, or Islamic studies face particularly bleak prospects. In contrast, graduates of economics, English, accounting, or finance show better employment outcomes, suggesting that employability is tied not to access but to alignment with evolving economic demands.
What has emerged is a paradox. The National University continues to enrol the majority of the country’s higher education students, yet its graduates are the least likely to find meaningful employment. The university’s system — originally designed to create opportunity — has in many ways become a holding ground for youth who see education as a formality rather than a pathway to skill or prosperity.
This disconnect has financial as well as social costs. With seats unfilled, institutional budgets suffer. The NU’s own revenue depends partly on admission and registration fees; as vacancies rise, its fiscal deficit deepens. The Vice Chancellor recently admitted that the university struggles to fund curriculum development, industry linkages, and quality enhancement initiatives because of this shortfall. The system, in essence, is trapped in a vicious cycle: declining quality drives students away, vacant seats reduce funding, and reduced funding further undermines quality.
Yet, the vacancy crisis is not just a numbers problem — it is an indicator of an existential drift in Bangladesh’s higher education policy. For decades, the country pursued expansion over excellence. Political convenience often dictated which institutions were affiliated, while academic viability was ignored. Colleges mushroomed across districts, many without libraries, laboratories, or qualified faculty. In some areas, a single teacher runs multiple departments; in others, attendance among both students and teachers is alarmingly low. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a system stretched beyond its intended purpose.
The consequence is that a university that should have been a backbone of inclusive education now risks becoming an emblem of mediocrity. Employers, aware of the quality gap, increasingly prefer graduates from private or specialised institutions. NU degrees, once respected, are often treated with scepticism in professional recruitment. A generation of graduates thus enters the job market burdened with credentials that command little value.
The crisis also reveals a profound urban-rural divide. Students from remote districts, who were meant to benefit most from NU’s decentralised model, now find themselves trapped in institutions that offer neither skill nor mobility. They are less competitive in both the domestic job market and overseas opportunities. The promise of access has been met, but the promise of empowerment remained unfulfilled.
What the National University needs now is not further expansion but strategic contraction and reinvention. First, the affiliation process must be revisited. Colleges unable to maintain minimum academic standards should lose their affiliation. Quality assurance mechanisms must be transparent and independent, insulated from political pressure. Second, curriculum reform is urgent. Linking education with employability — through technical, vocational, and industry-integrated courses — should no longer be optional. Bangladesh’s labour market does not lack graduates; it lacks skilled ones.
Third, regional equity must be addressed through targeted investment rather than unchecked proliferation. Rural colleges should receive grants tied to performance indicators — student outcomes, research output, and faculty development. Teacher training must be institutionalised; it is not an occasional affair. The idea that a college can function with part-time instructors and outdated syllabi must be decisively abandoned.
Finally, higher education planning must confront a fundamental question: should the goal be to increase enrolment or to increase value? A degree without competence does not elevate a society; it dilutes it. Bangladesh’s demographic dividend — its young population — can only be harnessed if education produces skill, innovation, and adaptability. The National University sits at the heart of that equation.
The story of vacant seats is therefore not just about numbers; it is about a nation’s uneasy relationship with its own aspirations. Empty chairs in classrooms are symbols of lost confidence — of students choosing to walk away from an education that no longer promises progress. The challenge before policymakers is not to fill those seats hastily but to make them worth filling.
Until that happens, the National University will continue to stand as both a monument to ambition and a mirror of neglect — a system that expanded without evolving, that offered access without assurance, and that now faces the sobering task of redefining its purpose before it is too late.
Ìý
HM Nazmul Alam is an academic and political analyst based in Dhaka. Currently he is teaching at IUBAT.
