THE New Nation on Thursday reported that about 47 percent graduates of the country are unemployed and the number is increasing day by day as the country’s education system is unable to provide candidates who can cope with the job market demands. Moreover, political instability and the resultant slow down in investment and establishing new businesses are creating a wider gap when the number of unemployed graduates is only growing as lesser number of jobs are being created in the economy. We may suggest that our education system must be reorganized with more focus on local and international job market requirements while production of graduates who don’t have the required level of competencies must be discouraged.
Looking at our education system we must say that higher pass rates with top grades in public examinations, mushrooming of private universities without adequate standards and recruiting low quality teachers in public varsities are contributing to producing unskilled graduates. The past several years also did not bring much improvement in the system. So the huge number of graduates we are producing every year is only adding to the burden on the country at a time when foreigners are occupying most skilled oriented jobs in garments and such other sectors and their presence in big business houses and NGOs is also noticeable. The country is not producing suitable manpower.
When the overall unemployment rate is 5 percent in Bangladesh at the moment, the ratio of graduate unemployment is apparently too high and extremely worrying, and this in turn puts the credibility of all Bangladeshi universities and other institutions on the line. We must say the unemployed generation is worrying the nation as they are adding to socio-economic tension. They are also highly vulnerable to committing crimes and it partly explains why the rate of crimes being committed is also on the rise.
It is unequivocally true that the country is suffering due to the poor standard of tertiary education. After all, none of Bangladesh’s newly set up public universities and 70 private universities appears in any of the existing global rankings. Wealthy people are setting up higher educational institutions such as universities as business firms to mint money by charging high fees and giving easily earned academic certificates to unsuitable graduates. Most Bangladeshi Universities are in the news for various irregularities, acts of student violence and governance related problems. We must say that the government should encourage the opening of more vocational training and skill development institutes instead of giving licenses to new private universities because they lack the desire to develop proper educational standards.
Unemployment is a curse in many ways but the same manpower may be turned into productive manpower by changing the course of education and training. We must take dividends of our rising population by training them for the global job market. The world has become smaller with a fast moving communication network and developed country lack enough manpower. So Bangladesh must develop its educational system so that it produces more skilled manpower rather than unskilled and unemployed graduates.
