Education enlightens human beings. There was a time when this much was enough for meaningful living of humankind.
The education provided by the tertiary academic institutions in Bangladesh is far below the global standard. This is evident from the fact that the universities in the country are globally ranked as very poor. The education provided in our universities is in no way compatible with demand for modern job market at home and abroad. As a result of this there is a wider gap between the needs of the market and the courses offered by higher academic institutions here. So the number of unemployed and underemployed graduates, coming out of such universities, is increasing day by day. Here lies the crux of the problem. The knowledge, wisdom, skill, understanding, vision and intellectual growth and capability of our graduates are hardly well-matched with faster global challenges in every professional area. The graduates having little skills are not properly responsive to contemporary practical workplace situation.
To prove their mettle in the internal and global job market the graduates needs to have in-depth knowledge, sharpness, skill, capability and the sense of professionalism. These are the pivotal necessity for new graduates of today. The universities or any alma mater of higher education, against this backdrop, have to produce workforce befitting the ever-changing and challenging requirement of the contemporary job market at home and abroad. It is, therefore, necessary that the country’s policymakers seriously engage themselves to address these fundamental requirements of the changing time. This is in the best interests of nation building and manpower development for the global market. There is no alternative to producing relevant knowledge-based fully skilled human resources in this highly competitive world.
The contemporary job market at home and abroad demand educated and skilled manpower to feed the modern commerce, industrial and other sectors of an economy. The country’s education sector has to produce such educated and skilled personnel to aid the recent domestic and global economic development needs. In this front our present educational institutions are lacking far from fulfilling the requirements. So the country’s academic policymakers must have to demonstrate more prudence in designing purposeful and need-based curricula. Such curriculum needs to be matching with changing trends in global and domestic market demand.
Therefore, the higher education policy makers of the country have to take into account the task for turning the country’s youth into well-educated and skilled workforce at the earliest. This is urgent in this geographically small but populous country like Bangladesh to meet challenges to compete in both the internal and the global job market demand of the on going day.
The writer is a retired Professor of Economics and Vice Principal, Cumilla Women’s Government College, Cumilla.
Editor : M. Shamsur Rahman
Published by the Editor on behalf of Independent Publications Limited at Media Printers, 446/H, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1215.
Editorial, News & Commercial Offices : Beximco Media Complex, 149-150 Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1208, Bangladesh. GPO Box No. 934, Dhaka-1000.
Editor : M. Shamsur Rahman
Published by the Editor on behalf of Independent Publications Limited at Media Printers, 446/H, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1215.
Editorial, News & Commercial Offices : Beximco Media Complex, 149-150 Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1208, Bangladesh. GPO Box No. 934, Dhaka-1000.
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