THE New Nation recently 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 produce candidates capable to cope with the job market demands. Moreover, political instability and the slow down in investment and setting up new businesses are creating a wider gap when the number of unemployed graduates is only growing as lesser number of jobs have been created in the economy. We may suggest that our education system must be reorganized with more focus on local and international job market requirements. Producing graduates who don’t have the required level of competence 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 manpower and specially aimless graduates. The past several years also did not bring much improvement. 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 garment and such other sectors and their presence in big business houses and NGOs is also exponentially rising.
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 colleges and universities 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 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 and medical colleges as commercial firms to mint money by charging high fees. They realize huge admission fees and give 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. They have no academic standard and quality watch on teaching.
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 countries lack enough manpower. Bangladesh must develop its educational system so that it produces more skilled manpower rather than unskilled and unemployed graduates.
