Universities across the country has got online boost under the Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP) of Bangladesh Education and Research Network (BdERN).
Under the programme, 35 universities are being provided with high performance connectivity, and education and management contents development services while the universities are also getting better support online for research, innovation and knowledge-sharing among them.
The HEQEP is promoting academic innovation in the universities through introducing the Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) – a competitive funding mechanism. To date, the fund supported over 300 sub-projects through three rounds of competitive grant awards.
The AIF, has instilled a culture of research and innovation in the universities, which became integral part of teaching and learning. It has further laid the foundation for the next phase of commercialization of innovation by establishing two Technology Transfer Offices and 10 university-industry partnerships.
HEQEP also implements quality assurance mechanism at national and institutional levels in Bangladesh. Significant progress has been with Institutional Quality Assurance Cells established in 61 public and private universities.
These universities will produce around 800 self-assessments which identify the challenges of delivering quality education and take pro-active steps in addressing those issues.
The government, with the support from the World Bank, has been implementing the HEQEP through the University Grants Commission since 2009 with the aim to improve quality of higher education and boost research and innovation in the universities.
The successful implementation of the project led to $125 million in additional financing from the World Bank in March 2014, culminating to a total of $206 million support for the project.
