Why do university graduates remain unemployed?

Bangladesh is facing a potential crisis that affects our higher education system as well as the socioeconomic progress of the country: an employability skills gap. Every year, thousands of new graduates enter the job market with a certificate in hand, but they have no job offers. A few years ago, the case of a newly-minted college graduate who had posted signs on utility poles in Bogura, advertising that he was willing to "teach for food," made headlines. "Du bela bhaater binimoye porate chai" (Want to teach in exchange for two meals a day) said the flyer that went viral in January 2022. Now, this particular graduate's plight may have been overdramatised, and this may be an exceptional case. But we cannot avoid addressing the larger problem of a persistent mismatch between supply and demand of skills. We have an abundance of educated manpower with the skills that are underutilised, but, in sharp contrast, there is also a severe shortage of appropriate skills that industries and businesses need and are searching for.

What accounts for this mismatch between supply and demand? Actually, there are two separate job market segments in Bangladesh: 1) the market that new university graduates face (market A or M-A); and 2) the marketplace for entry-level positions in manufacturing and service industries (or M-B). Oftentimes, in everyday parlance, we mix M-A and M-B up, and for good reason. It is not uncommon for the families of new graduates (who are in M-A) to expect that they will find work at banks, government bureaucracy, commercial firms or in the service industry right after graduation, i.e. in M-B. Families feel they have invested a good deal of money to "buy" the certificate or diploma, and one cannot blame them if the diploma is considered a ticket to a vacancy in M-B. Unfortunately, the prospective employer in M-B will be reluctant to hand over an appointment letter to an applicant in M-A in exchange for a copy of the diploma.

Who is to blame? Many parties share the responsibility: students, their parents, universities, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the corporate sector, and the government.

Let me give a real-life example. Prof Faizul Huq of the Business School at Northeastern University in Boston, US was in Dhaka recently on an assignment. A family member requested him to help find a job for her son at Anglo-American Corporation, whose director Huq knew. The candidate, a newly-minted MBA from one of the top private universities, was invited for a job interview, where he failed to answer some basic questions on accounting.

The sorry state of affairs recounted by Prof Huq is not an isolated incident. Speaker after speaker at a recent international gathering of administrators, faculty, and representatives of the Bangladesh government (including the Prime Minister's Office and UGC) in Boston mentioned that graduates with a business degree had neither the soft skills nor the knowledge necessary for employability. The conference, titled "Private Universities in Bangladesh – Challenges, Opportunities, and Stakeholders Engagement," was organised by the International Sustainable Development Institute (ISDI) on October 6, 2023, at the University of Massachusetts Boston, US. The key themes of the daylong conference were the quality of education, accreditation, global engagement, the role of technology, and experiential learning. A member of the Board of Trustees of North South University (NSU) noted that most private universities in Bangladesh had become "diploma mills"—churning out graduates without educating them. Employers, on the other hand, reported a shortage of candidates with hard, soft and technological skills.

In a nutshell, Bangladesh has a surplus of highly educated university graduates with a minimum of a bachelor's degree. However, millions of them either do not have a full-time job or are underemployed. They are stuck in low-end jobs that don't utilise their knowledge and skills. Many companies trying to hire skilled workers find a severe shortage of competent and experienced candidates with the required background.

Every year, public and private universities are minting out new graduates who enter the job market. Private education in Bangladesh is expensive, and the better-known universities are flourishing on exorbitant tuition fees. Parents and concerned family members are overwhelmed. They struggle with a lack of teachers, unfinished curriculum, grade inflation, etc. Research also reveals other major issues plaguing our higher education (tertiary) institutions.

This will have an effect on our SDG targets. If our goal, as declared in Sustainable Development Goal #4, is to "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" by 2030, we are failing miserably. The tertiary education sector needs to recalibrate its mission and aim to provide graduates with quality education and the skills they need to pursue a meaningful and fruitful career.

What do we do to alleviate this situation? First of all, the UGC needs to consider a moratorium on new private universities. Each university needs to take stock of existing programmes and review their curriculum and practices. Second, there is an urgent need for reforms within the higher education institutions (HEI). In a cutting op-ed on these pages, a former vice-chancellor called for sweeping changes in our "outdated, inefficient higher education institutions" (The Daily Star, December 19, 2023).

Third, the accreditation process must be strengthened with greater emphasis on curriculum, including STEM, in addition to "permanent campuses." The UGC needs to enforce periodic reviews of each university and programme and close flagging institutions if necessary. Fourth, all universities must incorporate experiential learning in their curriculum. Participants at the ISDI conference unanimously agreed on the need for greater collaboration between HEIs and the corporate sector to prepare graduates for jobs available in the market. Finally, the newly elected government could set up a commission to conduct a feasibility study of a National Service Corps to equip graduates accordingly so they can overcome their employability skills gap and transition into the job market. This model is currently used by countries like Turkey, Switzerland, Singapore, Israel, South Korea, North Korea, Eritrea, Nigeria, Norway, Sweden, and Ghana.

Dr Abdullah Shibli is an economist and works for Change Healthcare, Inc., an information technology company. He also serves as senior research fellow at the US-based International Sustainable Development Institute (ISDI).

Views expressed in this article are author's own. 

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