Bridging the Gap between Universities and Society

The modern university is meant to be a lighthouse for the community, but the gap between Bangladesh’s higher education system and its society has widened into a chasm. A university’s true value lies in its civic engagement, intellectual openness and responsiveness to societal needs. However, when a university isolates itself or is forced into compliance, it ceases to be an engine of social progress. Today, Bangladesh’s higher education landscape stands as a stark warning of what happens when this foundational bond is broken.

Public universities in Bangladesh, which should be the vanguard of free thought and cutting-edge community research, are instead paralysed by partisan political allegiance and campus violence. The politicisation of both faculty and student bodies has turned campuses into battlegrounds. This volatile environment acts as a major stumbling block to a congenial academic atmosphere. When vice-chancellors, administrators and academics are appointed based on political loyalty rather than academic merit, intellectual integrity is the first casualty by replacing academic freedom and genuine intellectual practices with conformity and fear. It completely severs the university’s ability to engage with the public or conduct meaningful research that solves real-world problems.

On the other side of the spectrum, private universities suffer from a different, yet equally debilitating, form of paralysis. Governed by the Private University Act 2010, these institutions are run by private boards of trustees, yet they completely fail to offer true academic freedom or administrative autonomy. Even routine, necessary changes or revisions in curricula to meet evolving global trends require navigating a labyrinth of bureaucratic approvals. Consequently, these universities function more like rigid corporate enterprises than dynamic centres of higher learning.

Compounding this crisis is the absolute lack of institutional protection for private university educators. Unlike their public counterparts, they do not possess any bargaining agency, such as an academic union, to protect their rights or advocate for systemic reforms. Unfortunately, University Grants Commission (UGC) has still not formulated a standardised service rule for private university academics to guarantee their job security. This has left faculty members entirely at the mercy of arbitrary decisions by boards of trustees. In an environment where an educator can be dismissed without due process, intellectual risk-taking dies, and the classroom becomes an assembly line of uninspired instruction.

Compelling both public and private systems into a shared state of stagnation is the recent introduction of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) prescribed by World Bank. While well-intentioned in theory, this highly bureaucratic project has turned out to be a suffocating straightjacket for academics across the country. Faculty members now spend their valuable time filling out endless compliance matrices, mapping abstract rubrics and chasing administrative paperwork rather than focusing on impactful teaching or community-engaged research. This centralising tendency is highly counterproductive, imposing a rigid, “one-size-fits-all” approach onto a diverse higher education landscape that desperately needs flexibility, creativity and localised problem-solving.

In recent years, policymakers, regulatory body like UGC and academics serving as vice-chancellors have relentlessly emphasised building a pipeline between academia and industry. Yet, in this hyper-fixation on corporate utility, we hardly ever talk about the far more critical need to bridge the gap between society and academia. Our researchers rarely prioritise community-based research. Instead of contributing to the production of pure, transformative knowledge, many have succumbed to the superficial allure of global “citation mills” to boost institutional metrics. But as we enter the complex landscape of the post-humanism era, neither the raw marketability of degrees nor the shallow fetish of global university rankings will keep Bangladesh’s universities relevant. If higher education is to survive as a meaningful institution, it must look beyond corporate balance sheets and global prestige metrics, and intentionally pivot towards the real, human needs of the community and broader society.

To bridge the gap between higher education and society, universities must be reclaimed as a public good. Healing this fractured landscape requires immediate, structural intervention from policymakers, university administrations, intellectuals and civil society. Appointment of university leadership, including Vice-Chancellors, must be strictly based on verifiable global academic merit and research excellence, rather than partisan political affiliations, to dismantle campus violence. Private institutions’ authentic curricular autonomy must be granted, allowing departments to dynamically update their programmes to match societal and market needs without waiting for protracted regulatory approvals. UGC must immediately mandate a comprehensive service rule for private university faculty that guarantees basic job security, fair termination protocols, and the right to form independent academic associations free from partisan political loyalty. Finally, the rigid OBE mandate must be transformed into a flexible guidelines system, shifting the focus away from bureaucratic paperwork and towards funding community-engaged research and public-participation projects. Impactful teaching should be the top priority.

Ultimately, a society cannot thrive if its centres of knowledge are broken. In Bangladesh, economic ambitions are being held back by a suffocating higher education system. Rebuilding the bridge between universities and society is now a national necessity. Only by restoring academic freedom, ensuring institutional autonomy and protecting the dignity of educators, our universities can transform from ivory towers into vibrant engines of social equity and national progress. 
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The writer is an Associate Professor of the Department of English at Stamford University Bangladesh. He can be contacted at [email protected]