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THERE is no controversy about the strength that a country acquires in the economic sense from having a well educated population. Such education is not understood to be limited to basics of numeracy or literacy but higher and diverse education with special stress given on technical and vocational education and many forms of specialised education. People having such education are counted as human resources ready for application in various economic activities to create and sustain economic growth which in turn alleviates poverty and raises living standards. The very fast developments in many spheres of human existence in the last century and the present one should leave no ambiguities in any mind about the indispensability of banking on diverse forms of education as the main way of economic survival in the years ahead.
It is not that awareness does not exist in Bangladesh about the pivotal role of education for the all round economic advancement of the country. Government also says that it is happy to spend the greatest amount out of budgetary resources for education. But the realities in different areas and levels of education remain frustrating and disappointing to say the least. Primary education is the recipient of the lion's share from the education budget. But several impartial and highly reliable non-governmental assessment of the state of primary education conducted by donors or donor-supported organisations in recent years expressed deep worry due to the poor quality of primary education, the rate of dropouts and pervasive corruption in the system. The quality of secondary and higher secondary education is no better. Worse still is the performance at higher levels of education at universities or equivalents.
Bangladeshi students in large number now drain billions of taka of this poor country to study abroad. This is because the limited number of public universities cannot provide admission to the growing number of the student population who seek higher education. Besides, the declining standard of education at the public universities, politics in their campuses and violence, leading to continuous session jams that stretch unusually the period students are required to complete courses, frequent postponing and rescheduling of examinations, etc., are also factors that explain the exodus of students to foreign countries.
Private universities in the country are growing in number. The total number of private universities in the country is 51. But only a handful of these can be relied on to impart education befitting their status as universities. A good number of the private universities are seriously lacking in having requisite number of properly qualified and competent teachers. Course contents in various subjects are also found seriously deficient in most cases at these universities. They lack adequate library resources and other facilities of full fledged universities. The private universities are also preponderantly offering courses on business studies and social sciences to the exclusion of engineering, medical and other professionally demanded courses. Thus, most of them are hardly playing an effective role in creating human resources in diverse forms for the economy's needs.
Clearly, a sense of direction is lacking in the sphere of education. Reportedly, successive governments instituted six education commissions in the 34 years of the country's existence. But the findings or suggestions of none of these commissions were considered by any government. Therefore, the issue of their implementation could not arise. Thus, the first task in order should be the earliest formulation of policy to overhaul and do whatever things are needed for the improvement of the country's education system.
The main challenge in the education sphere of Bangladesh is achieving a complete recast of outdated syllabuses and education systems which are not in conformity with the requirements of the twenty-first century. Even the previously backward neighbours of Bangladesh in the educational sense are now leap-frogging ahead in recasting and dynamising their modes of education to embrace state-of-the art educational systems.
A shining example of this trend is India. India has built up a very good base in science and technology education and many of its institutions dealing with science and technology education are in the public sector. This means that successive Indian governments have been very pragmatically pumping substantial public resources into these forms of education to create the right sort of human resources to drive the economy to a higher level. Also a right kind of environment has been created there under an appropriate regulatory authority for encouraging private investments in educational institutions that have relevance to present-day needs. Thus, India's educational systems are now producing in abundance world class information technology (IT) experts in different fields, engineers, biotechnologists, agri-scientists, pharmacists, etc.
The educational base of India is so strong that it could establish itself as a global IT power and remarkably boost its foreign exchange earnings from this source alone in a short period of time. In contrast, Malaysia, with its relatively stronger IT strengths in the form of investments and infrastructures, could not quite match India's phenomenal earnings from the IT sector because this country has not been producing in sheer number as many well-educated IT professionals as India. The main reason for Malaysia's underperformance in the IT sector is that country's lagging behind India in not having as much facilities for imparting IT-related education.
Pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms and steel producing industries of completely Indian origin having an existence not only in India, but worldwide, are flourishing. These are fed by the streams of well-educated young men and women from the many international standard educational institutions in India offering appropriate education linked to such industries.
The Indian educational system may not be a role model for Bangladesh. There are better educational systems in the world -- the Japanese one, the Korean one and others. But the point is that even by emulating somewhat the present Indian educational system, Bangladesh can break out of its present stagnancy in education which is hardly helping the country to move forward.
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