Ensuring Quality in Higher Education

In Bangladesh’s higher education sector, it is no longer reasonable to emphasise increasing the number of universities. Rather, the priority should now be to improve learning outcomes there. The central question is no longer how many universities the country has or whether they are public or private. Instead, the focus should be on ensuring quality and relevance across the entire higher education system. Now, the major challenge is to build a university system in which access, academic standards, research, employability, and public trust advance in harmony.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has enlisted 116 private universities alongside 59 public universities. Private institutions are therefore not a peripheral part of higher education; they are a major national capacity. They have widened access, created new disciplines, introduced flexible academic calendars, and, in many cases, built links with industry and overseas institutions. Yet, this growth has also produced unevenness. Some universities have invested heavily in faculty, laboratories, libraries, research, and student services; others remain overly dependent on part-time teaching, narrow classroom instruction, or business models in which enrolment growth matters more than academic depth. This unevenness cannot be corrected simply by adding more rules. Bangladesh already has the Private University Act 2010, the Bangladesh Accreditation Council, the Bangladesh National Qualifications Framework, and institutional quality-assurance mechanisms. 
Accreditation must become the cornerstone of this transformation. Data from the Bangladesh Accreditation Council in 2026 revealed that only 11 academic programmes had received accreditation or confidence certificates. This does not necessarily imply poor quality for the rest; rather, it highlights that the national accreditation system is still nascent, given the sector’s size. The government should establish a realistic, time-bound roadmap requiring every established university to seek external accreditation for its eligible programmes. 

Second, quality must be made transparent. UGC the Accreditation Council should jointly publish a public dashboard for each university and major programmes. This dashboard should report, in comparable formats, full-time faculty strength, faculty qualifications, student-teacher ratios, permanent campus status, laboratory and library capacity, accreditation status, research output, graduate completion rates, scholarships, and--where reliable data are available-- graduate employment or further study outcomes. Such transparency would offer far greater protection to students than occasional warnings. Families investing years of savings in a degree deserve information that allows them to compare institutions based on substance, not just advertising.
Third, Bangladesh must recognise university teachers as the foundational infrastructure of higher education. While buildings are important, universities are fundamentally communities of scholars. Minimum recruitment qualifications are merely a starting point. The government and UGC should mandate transparent recruitment and promotion criteria, reasonable teaching loads and clear service rules. Private universities should be encouraged to foster stable, full-time academic careers rather than over-reliance on visiting faculty. Simultaneously, strong institutions should have the flexibility to recruit teachers from home and abroad and reward outstanding teaching and research without being constrained by rigid uniformity.
Fourth, curriculum reform needs to extend beyond fashionable course titles. A modern graduate requires not only disciplinary knowledge but also strong writing skills, quantitative reasoning, digital and AI literacy, teamwork, ethical judgement, effective communication, and the capacity for continuous learning. While programmes should be reviewed in consultation with employers, professional bodies, alumni, and academics, universities must not devolve into mere vocational training centres. The broader purpose of higher education is to cultivate capable professionals, responsible citizens, researchers, entrepreneurs, and independent thinkers. Employability and intellectual depth are complementary, not competing, objectives.
Fifth, research policy must prioritise quality over volume. Bangladesh’s on-going Higher Education Acceleration and Transformation initiative already emphasises digital transformation, research, accreditation, and graduate readiness. This agenda should be leveraged to create competitive grants accessible to both public and private universities, featuring peer review, transparent selection processes, and measurable outcomes. 
Effective governance is equally important. A university cannot cultivate a culture of excellence if ownership disputes, political interference, or short-term commercial interests consistently undermine academic decisions. Boards of trustees and syndicates must adhere to clear conflict-of-interest standards, while vice-chancellors, deans, and academic councils require genuine authority over academic affairs. Regulatory intervention should be most robust in cases of fraud, financial misconduct, chronic non-compliance, or student risk, and less intrusive when institutions consistently meet published standards. In essence, autonomy must be earned through accountability. Furthermore, the government should avoid the temptation to apply a single template to all universities. Bangladesh requires a diverse ecosystem of research-intensive universities, strong teaching universities, specialised institutions, and regional universities serving varied communities. High-performing institutions should be incentivised to innovate, internationalise, and collaborate. In contrast, underperforming institutions should be given a defined period to improve, followed by sanctions if they fail to protect students.
The government’s role is to establish an independent regulatory framework, ensure credible accreditation, provide transparent data, and allocate competitive funding. Universities, in turn, must commit to high-quality teaching, honest governance, and demonstrable improvement. 
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The writer is Assistant Professor at Bangladesh Institute of Governance and Management (BIGM).

He can be reached at [email protected]