It indeed augurs well for development partners, who gathered in Dhaka on Wednesday for assessing prospects and problems of Bangladesh's vast opportunities in order to tap a rich demographic dividend the country offers with its oversize population. Renowned economist Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud said, "Bangladesh's economic growth so far has been driven by a replication approach - in respect of low- productivity ready-made garment export, export of low-skilled labour, and expansion of micro-enterprises. For the next stage of growth, we need to switch from replication to innovation in terms of productivity increase and skill development."
In fact, Bangladesh needs to develop some basic skills so that the South Asian country could be on a par with changing market demand. In this age of internet, one can have global knowledge in one's pocket but not skills. Bangladesh's educational institutions should focus on this issue. All experts, however, put emphasis on efficiency in English language. Students should have good communication skills. Universities should create the scope so that students could learn how to communicate effectively. In this industry-university collaboration, chambers of commerce can play a big role.
Skill development has three major dimensions and these are graduate development, content i.e. curriculum development and finally faculty development. Students in Bangladesh need to be oriented about job market from the 2nd year so that they could prepare themselves to face the challenges of tomorrow. The second dimension is to review course curriculum and how these programmes are relevant to meet the demands of our industry. Most of business cases and examples are taught from Western perspective but we should also promote local success stories and cases. The third dimension is to continuously develop our faculties and many of them are not aware about emerging industries.
Partners of the Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) should advise the government to mount pressure on the country's educational institutions to take structured approach in developing capabilities of faculties and industry must play its role by offering insights and exposure. It is also true that our current talent pipeline is unable to meet managerial requirements considering short supply of quality graduate and limited development opportunities offered by a large number of local corporates. It is important to establish a clear roadmap to attain desired growth objectives.
Once Sharful Alam, COO, Aamra Technologies Limited, a trend-setter in Bangladesh, hit the right chord when he told a seminar in Dhaka that there was a yawning disconnect between industry and university because they rarely talk and listen to each other.
Job market is changing continuously and evolving very fast. "Rapid progress of information technology is replacing clerical jobs."
Shareful Alam went on: "There is a huge demand but acute shortage in supply of innovative and intelligent graduates. Innovation has to be encouraged and rewarded at academic level. We have to follow the changing requirements of our job market and prepare our students accordingly."
Experts admit that knowledge can be acquired, skills can be changed and learnt but what we find lacking is confidence and attitude. Leadership, soft skills, communication skills are very much needed. "We cannot work without English skills. Today, learning English is no longer an added advantage; it is a must to compete with the outside world. Universities can focus on fixing these basics. India has been following the university-industry collaboration for many years. They have strong industrial attachment programme in their education curricula."
In Bangladesh, most of our universities invite industrial people to give lectures. But it is a one-off programme. We have to build a consistent partnership where both industry and university will have a stake for a particular outcome. If nobody has a stake in it, nobody will be accountable.
Bangladesh has a total work force of about 85 million. And 42 per cent among them are young people. Creating employment opportunities for such a large number of workforce is indeed a daunting task. Educational institutions have on them the onus of educating their students properly so that they can find good jobs and flourish their potential. In our country, there are very few platforms for their collaboration with the institutions. There must be platforms where these institutions of skill development will understand the need of industries and industries will find research and resources for further development. The country's young graduates will thus be able to get the best of this partnership. Thus the country could easily attain one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): a demographic dividend armed with skills.
In fact, development of skills poses a challenge for the country to attain the SDG. This is because workers' skill development is a must to counter the challenge. Besides, freedom of expression, fair wages, decent workplace, job safety and protection of basic rights of the workers are also imperative. The government, recruiters and workers will have to sit together for the purpose of creating a favourable working condition.
