Edn expands sans maintaining quality

Bangladesh has expanded access to education rapidly, but meaningful learning, quality research and employable skills have not grown at the same pace, says Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah, Professor of Economics at the University of Dhaka.

He identifies blurred institutional missions, weak governance, flawed faculty recruitment, inadequate research incentives and an excessive emphasis on publication numbers as major weaknesses in the country’s higher education system.

Rather than turning every tertiary institution into a research university, Bangladesh needs a functionally diversified system comprising research-intensive universities, teaching-focused institutions, applied science and technology institutions, and credible degree colleges, he says.

In an interview with the Daily Observer, Prof Asadullah, who holds Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Economics from Oxford University, called for merit-based academic governance, independent research-integrity mechanisms and a five-to-ten-year strategy to strengthen the country’s teaching and research workforce. We share the interview with our valued readers:

Daily Observer (DO): What are the major structural problems in Bangladesh’s education system?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: The fundamental failure is one of educational conversion. Bangladesh has expanded schooling much faster than it has converted years of attendance into meaningful learning.

We have experienced “schooling without learning”. The problem begins with weaknesses in foundational literacy and numeracy and continues through secondary and higher education. Students are often promoted without acquiring the competencies expected at the previous stage.


DO: Where is the biggest inconsistency in higher education?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: The primary anomaly is the blurring of the distinction between undergraduate-focused colleges and research-driven universities.

Ideally, a university should generate new knowledge, promote critical inquiry and conduct advanced research, while degree colleges should focus primarily on teaching and professional preparation.

In Bangladesh, hundreds of affiliated colleges offer undergraduate and master’s degrees, many without adequate teachers, infrastructure or academic supervision. At the same time, many universities focus largely on classroom teaching, examinations and degree distribution, with little sustained research or doctoral training.

DO: What should qualify an institution as a university?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: A university cannot be defined merely by classrooms, examinations and degree distribution. A genuine university needs a sustained culture of credible peer-reviewed research, postgraduate supervision and intellectual exchange.

Research requires functioning research groups, mentoring, competitive grants, doctoral pipelines and national and international scholarly networks. Academic freedom and independent inquiry are equally important. Most importantly, universities need a critical mass of transformative professors who can create knowledge, mentor younger academics and build research teams.

DO: Is the research crisis mainly a problem of funding or governance?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: Chronic underfunding is certainly a problem, but the core constraint is structural and institutional. It is predominantly a failure of governance, flawed recruitment and poor incentive structures.

Even when funds are allocated, bureaucratic bottlenecks, opaque procurement and a lack of meritocratic distribution can undermine research. Recruitment has also too often prioritised political loyalty, personal networks or formal credentials over research potential, intellectual independence and teaching ability.

DO: What is needed to strengthen research integrity?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: A retraction does not automatically prove deliberate misconduct. Papers may be withdrawn because of honest errors, plagiarism, fabricated data, manipulated peer review or authorship abuse. Each case requires a transparent and fair investigation.

Bangladesh needs a national research-integrity framework supported by an independent body. Research-active universities should have professionally staffed integrity offices, ethics-review mechanisms and clear procedures for complaints, investigation and appeals.

Common standards should cover plagiarism, authorship, data management, conflicts of interest, peer-review manipulation and responsible use of AI. The national body must be independent of political appointments.

DO: Should Bangladesh differentiate between research universities, teaching-focused universities, applied institutions and degree colleges?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: Yes. Institutional differentiation is imperative. It is economically unrealistic and academically counterproductive to force every tertiary institution to become a comprehensive research university.

A limited number of research-intensive universities should focus on postgraduate education, doctoral supervision and knowledge production. 
Teaching-focused universities should prioritise excellent undergraduate and professional education. Applied institutions should maintain strong links with industry, while degree colleges should provide credible undergraduate education under effective quality assurance. The key is to connect institutional mission with funding and accountability.

DO: How can existing teachers be prepared for research?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: Bangladesh needs a carefully sequenced five-to-ten-year faculty-renewal strategy rather than simply requiring every teacher to publish.

Teachers should receive PhD and postdoctoral fellowships, training in research methods, data analysis, academic writing and research ethics, together with mentorship from established researchers. They also need protected research time, access to data and laboratories, competitive grants and opportunities to undertake genuine research projects.

We should introduce differentiated career tracks. Academics specialising in teaching excellence should be able to progress without being forced to produce artificial research, while those choosing a research track should meet higher standards of knowledge production.

DO: What three steps should Bangladesh take over the next five to ten years?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: First, Bangladesh needs meritocratic and transparent academic governance, with reduced political influence over recruitment, promotion and leadership appointments.

Second, it needs sustained and competitive research funding linked to capacity building, including doctoral and postdoctoral training, laboratories, research groups, datasets and international collaboration.

Third, Bangladesh must build a credible national research ecosystem, including modern research infrastructure, scholarly databases, research-integrity systems and stronger international academic networks. Rankings should not become the objective. If governance, research quality and knowledge production improve, better rankings will follow.

DO: Lastly, what kind of universities should Bangladesh seek to build over the next decade?
Prof Dr M Niaz Asadullah: Bangladesh needs an agile, merit-based and functionally diversified higher education ecosystem suited to the demands of the 21st century.

Academic governance must be depoliticised, and the National University and its affiliated-college system need restructuring. Quality assurance must become consequential, with the UGC-or a reformed successor arrangement-having genuine professional capacity and regulatory autonomy.

Ultimately, Bangladesh must move away from fragmented, infrastructure-led expansion and invest sustainably in people and institutions: transformative professors, research groups, doctoral pipelines, laboratories, scholarly networks, research integrity and high-quality teaching.

The goal should not simply be to create more universities. It should be to create better and functionally differentiated universities capable of producing skilled graduates, knowledge, innovation and the intellectual leadership Bangladesh needs for the future.