।। M. M. Shahidul Hassan।।
Bangladesh is set its goal of becoming a developed country by 2041. Its GDP, therefore, must be increased to $12,000 from $1,700 over the next 21 years in achieving that status. Growing students in undergraduate programmes in universities in Bangladesh, if they can be equipped with high-level skills, will provide a window of opportunity to improve productivity and accelerate economic growth, and they will be able to contribute to GDP growth. Higher education in the West is seen as essential to economic and social progress. There is growing evidence that university education is essential for raising a country’s social capital and promoting social cohesion, which is proving to be an important determinant of economic growth and development.
Educationists carried a lot of research on the relationship between higher education and economic development of a country in the past and their research in the area is still underway. Western universities are constantly changing their roles to comply with the demands of the times. Universities in Bangladesh are still serving a traditional purpose; the purpose is basically the guardian of logic, inquiry, and openness, providing higher-order cognitive skills, the creator of a lifelong friendship environment. Changing their role is not being taken seriously. Even in the case of instruction they have not changed it from teacher-centered delivery of instruction to student-centered delivery to classes of students. On the other hand, covid-19 pandemic has posed a big challenge to education system in Bangladesh.
The education system is based on classroom teaching. Therefore, it is time to think about the system and make the necessary changes. Otherwise, teachers will impart subject knowledge to their students without preparing them as graduates of this century. In fact, the main difference between online and classroom lies in the preparation of lecture notes and presentation and proctoring exams. Teachers need to know online teaching and learning platforms. In rebuilding higher education in line with modern education system, critical issues need to be addressed.
Old universities mainly set their aims to educate students for lives of public service, to advance knowledge through research, and to develop leaders for various areas of the public service. Now, many universities extend their activities in developing discipline-specific competencies (e.g., knowledge, attribute, responsibility) as well as generic skills (e.g., communication, written, oral, compassion) and dispositions (e.g., problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, and attitudes) of students. Preparing a student for the demands of a modern labour market is an important purpose of a modern university. That is, the value for completing an undergraduate degree is to not only to acquire advanced knowledge and discipline-specific competencies or cognitive skills (e.g., understanding, language skills, reasoning, decision-making, remember and applying incoming information), but to provide students with the skills to compete in an increasingly global workplace and are the main employers. Thus, the purpose of participating in graduate education is to prepare youths with generic skills and civic values and qualities, and much more to achieve economic or employment benefits.
Research is increasingly looking at the value of non-cognitive skills and how education systems are impacting their development. Demand for non-cognitive skills will continually change with the need for the economy and job market, with trends that lead to fundamental changes such as the application of advanced technologies in the industrial and IT sectors. With economies increasingly turning to high-level technology and the Fourth Industrial Revolution huge jobs have been created in global job markets and more jobs will be created for highly skilled workers in coming days.
A big question for the future is how to equip the education system with a flexible set of students’ skills to more effectively support and better address the development of non-cognitive skills that can assist them in growing and continuously adapting to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Interestingly, research findings indicate that non-cognitive skills have concrete benefits in both education and job market outcomes.
Many studies were conducted at the international level with expectations of students from their higher education institutes, and all the studies claimed that students, especially graduate students, are now being motivated more instrumental and materialistic ambitions, as well as personal or social development concerns. So are the expectations of our graduate students. For undergraduate students, the university is now a means to increase their job pay and work opportunities, accelerate their career paths, and increase their marketability in both national and international job markets.
In other words, the student’s goals and objectives are increasingly motivated by personal and economic benefits, not intellectual or social good, to complete an undergraduate degree, while higher education institutions appear to focus on universal goals aimed at social reforms and individual cognitive skills and communication agendas. If the university and students do not have coordination goals and aim in place to complete an undergraduate degree, then both are likely to disappoint.
On the one hand, if students do not go beyond the minimum requirements in their engagements in learning tasks, academics and staff may be disappointed. On the other hand, students may balk at learning outcomes with little connection. To address this tension, policymakers, education and university authorities must talk about the progress and goals of improving higher education initiatives. The goal is to develop reforms or repurposing strategies throughout the competition imperatives and outline the success of critical definitions, measurement, and evaluation of specific goals, and outcomes in the hope of resolving or rebuilding potential skills mismatch in a changing world.
First, one more thing needs to be addressed. Spending on research and development facilities in higher education, even if it does not produce a single commercial product or start a new business, is well worth the money. However, with the help of financial assistance from outside the university, research questions have been raised about the policy of commercial products.
There is a risk of commercialization of higher education when we ask universities to focus on the commercial development of their innovation (Dr. Derek Bok, Harvard University). Without the higher purpose of this commercialization, the pursuit of commercial goals has the potential to spoil the central goal of creating a prepared mind by confusing the administration and faculty. In Bangladesh, a part of the university teachers are working not only to make commercial products through research with the financial support of the outside, rather they are directly involved with the commercial establishment. Authorities should immediately pay attention to it.
In order to survive in this competitive world, our policymakers, academics and university management must know the purpose of international universities and understand how those universities operate. They will take it seriously and help in reforming our universities into internationally recognized ones.
The writer is vice chancellor, East West University, Email: vc@ewubd.edu
