Challenges and Opportunities in Higher Education in Bangladesh: A Focus on Quality, Access, And Employability

Higher education in context of Bangladesh is characterized by an expansion of quantity alongside qualitative and systemic challenges. It is in this context that the current work sets out to gauge the set of core issues pertaining to the interdependent pillars of quality, access and employability. While the burgeoning of new universities and the concomitant spike in student enrollment is indeed a positive signal, the curriculum, faculty, and research infrastructure hardly ger the attention they deserve. Additionally, systemic inequities due to spatial and social contexts especially in the Global South make access inequitable. The functional consequence is a glaring mismatch of qualifications, skills and credentials that further exacerbates the rates of unemployment and underutilizations of skills. This work strives to address the complexities of such policies by distilling the variety of current research and policy documents to a narrower set of opportunities posed by the national policies, quality enhancement programs, adoption of new technologies, and promotion of entrepreneurship and vocational training. The situation outlined here demands a comprehensive and goal-centric approach to achieve a set of clearly articulated outcomes characterized by the rule of rigorous oversight, targeted financing and sustained collaboration between industry and academia.