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Knowledge is the engine of growth for any nation. An advanced level of instrumental knowledge and skills enable people to contribute towards national development. All over the world, economies are changing as knowledge is supplementing physical capital as the source of present and future growth. As knowledge becomes more important, so does higher education. The quality of knowledge generated within higher education institutions and its availability to the wider economy is becoming increasingly critical to national competitiveness. According to UNESCO, higher education is a long term social investment in productivity, social cohesion and cultural development. Basic and applied research within higher education and collaboration between universities with international orientation and -national business and industry can foster innovation and efficiency in resource utilization while properly addressing environmental concerns. Higher education enhances knowledge generation and cultural development including institutional autonomy, intellectual freedom and a culture of peace based on democracy, tolerance and mutual respect. A properly functioning higher education system can also lead to enhanced quality in basic education.

Funding is central to the success of the higher education system in terms of both institution building and access. Unfortunately, traditional public funding is falling short in meeting quantitative expansion and qualitative improvements. Hence, alternative funding modalities are gaining ground. Private (non-government) universities are emerging as a substantial supplement and more importantly, as a model for market-driven, dynamic and quality higher education. The importance of private universities is gaining momentum and is taking on an increasingly larger share of enrollment, reaching as high as 50 percent of the student body in higher education in certain countries.

Higher education is critical to the developing countries as it needs to cater to increasing numbers of students, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds. It promotes general education in addition to technical skills to ensure flexibility, innovation and continual renewal of socio-economic structures in a fast-changing world. Higher education in developing societies can ensure optimum utilization of limited resources and effectively make up for scarcity of material resources through developing human resources as an alternative to achieving socio-economic development. Developing societies are endowed with people, but have very limited natural resources and financial capital. By developing the people into human capital, they can overcome some of the limitations of financial capital and at the same time lay the basis for generating capital resources. Education and skill development may be chosen as the route for creating human capital.

Higher education also acts as a means of attaining enhanced social mobility. A vast number of people in the developing countries are caught in a vicious poverty trap. Spreading higher education among underdeveloped segments of the population can empower them to move up to a higher level of enlightenment and prosperity. Individual achievement benefits the wider community and acts as a propellant for inducing others to pursue higher education. In terms of intellectual capacity building, from individual, family, and community level up to the national administration and policy making, higher education plays a vital role. Quality higher education can result in a more pro-poor and pro-development policy framework and increased income generation from home and abroad by skilled human resources. Effective higher education plays a central role in promoting productivity, innovation, entrepreneurship, gender mainstrearning and overall socio-cultural advancement. A new vision of higher education in developing societies should combine the demands for universality of higher learning and greater relevance to the society. This vision stresses the principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy, while simultaneously emphasizing social accountability.

To achieve its anticipated goals, higher education must be relevant, internationalized, effective, dynamic and accessible to all. Relevance is about being responsive to the market and society in terms of learning content. Relevance is not confined to gainful employment alone. It is also about capacity building in policy issues and introduction of ethical standards, -democracy, peace and equity. Internationalization and cross-border cooperation can enhance relevance and marketability of higher education through exchange of experience and expertise between universities in the developed and developing countries and also through continuously adapting to the ever-changing skill requirements in the global milieu. Simultaneously, to be effective, the quality of education must also be of the highest standard, encompassing the existing body of knowledge along with dynamic exploration of emerging frontiers. To ensure propagation of learning and its resultant benefits to all segments of society, higher education must also be accessible to all.

Quality of higher education hinges on the adequacy of resources, infrastructure, curriculum, research, faculty, management, and governance. Infrastructure hi terms of premises, laboratories, libraries and modern teaching aids (Internet, multimedia) constitute the basic prerequisites of quality in higher education. The curriculum must cover all the basic skills and knowledge required for the present and future contexts of market and society at home and abroad. Research should focus on creating new knowledge, both local and international. Competent faculty is a function of education, training, experience and research for continued advancement. Management involves efficient administration of higher education institutions in operational terms while governance relates to institutional autonomy and academic freedom in terms of meeting quality parameters.

In developing societies, conventional approaches to meeting the different dimensions of higher education seem to be having limited success. Increased public funding and emergence of new public and non-government universities only partially meet the quantitative and qualitative challenges. More remains to be done in terms of devising a comprehensive solution to the issues of relevance, internationalization, effectiveness, dynamism and accessibility. Policymakers and stakeholders in developing societies are searching for viable and sustainable alternatives.

Pressure on higher education is on the rise due to increasing demand for it worldwide. Today, higher education confronts the new realities of expansion, differentiation and knowledge revolution. The challenge gets more pronounced in developing countries, forcing policymakers to think creatively. Previously, higher education in developing countries was available to a small number of students. Today, a dramatic shift from class to mass has occurred and half of the world's higher education students live in the developing countries. As more students complete primary and secondary education, demand for higher education keeps increasing. Developing countries have also seen a rise in real income, thereby bringing higher education within their reach.

Expansion has produced a variety of consequences. Existing institutions have grown in size and traditional institutions have been replicated by public or private ones. A more creative response has been differentiation, leading to new types of institutions and providers. Non-government institutions have joined public ones, while a range of vocational and professional schools now complement the traditional universities.

The public universities, despite substantial expansion, cannot cope with the rising demand. Emergence of non-government universities has proven instrumental in making higher education responsive to changing demand while complying with quality parameters. The proportion of students in private institutions is on the rise, reaching over 50 per cent of total enrollments in some countries, mostly developing ones.

According to the Nuffic Conference (2002), the major challenges facing governments and higher education institutions in the developing societies include access, massification, privatization, commoditization, quality assurance and maintenance, relevance, digital divide, international mobility of staff and trends in donor policies. Access relates to improved opportunities for women and students from poor families or regions. Massification relates to coping with the enormous growth in the number of students. Privatization signifies growing need of private funds and means to attract private investment without compromising access and quality.

Commoditization implies maneuvers by the developed countries to create a free global market for higher education as a commodity. The challenge for developing countries is to resist being flooded by second-rate, sub-standard courses that do not match their cultural setting or socio-economic needs. Regarding quality assurance and maintenance, in a backdrop of proliferation of national, private and cross-border institutions, the challenge is to ensure minimum quality and pursue continuous improvement.

Relevance signifies connection to the world of work where curricula are geared to the local circumstances, developed in conjunction with employers, thereby avoiding blind replication of irrelevant foreign values and ideas. Digital divide relates to new information and communication technology (ICT) opportunities with implications for huge investments. The challenge is to attract donor support and private funds to facilitate ICT access and simultaneously match online theoretical teaching with guidance and practical assignments. International mobility of staff, while offering great opportunities for the individuals, can easily lead to brain-drain in favor of the developing societies. The challenge is to resist this brain-drain and to create better opportunities for a well educated staff within the country. Finally, trends in donor policies relates to minimizing the cost of donor support while maximizing the benefits.

As can be observed from the above, the quality of human resource of a nation is easily judged by the educational attainment of its people. For the development of any field or area such as business, science, economics, religion education is deemed necessary. It is said that education is a must if a nation aspires to achieve growth and development and more importantly sustain it. This may well explain the fact that rich and developed nations of the world have very high literacy and productive human resource. Some of these are reflected below.

Higher education is essential to national social and economic development. Knowledge, skills and resourcefulness of people are increasingly replacing physical resources in promoting national development. For example, for a country like United States , the human capital is estimated to be at least three times more important than physical capital. In the 21 st century, this emphasis on knowledge has shifted dramatically. Increasingly every nation, particularly those which has been freed from colonial control, have unleashed national initiatives to transform their economies and societies. Education is recognized to be tool bringing the change and contributing to creation of wealth.

The developed countries has embraced this concept and making serious investment in higher education and the result from it is quite perceptible. As per the Worlds Education Indicators (WEI) program report published by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics which analyzes the progress made by 19 middle income and developing countries, member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and additional twelve countries on educational performance as of 2005, China has the most tertiary graduates in the world. As of 2005, more students entered and graduated in the 19 WEI countries than all the OECD countries combined. In terms of numbers about 5.7 millions WEI attained tertiary degree compared to 5.2 million from OECD countries. This figure would increase substantially if data from India would be added. From the WEIs data it is observed that China had most tertiary graduates in the world of 2.4 million which is more than the top three OECD countries combined: USA (1.4 millions, Japan (0.6 millions) and France (0.3 millions). This largely accounts for rapid growth of Chinese economy. Although WEI countries achieved substantial growth in education in general and more particularly in tertiary education, graduation ratios remain lower in WEI countries than those of the OECD and there is also wide scale problem of discrimination in term of access to tertiary education.

Our hard-earned independence taught us the value of development on the face of the economic disparity and gave us lesson of developing a modern economy making use of our own human and material resources. We have also set out the goals to reduce poverty, create condition of social justice and strengthen the foundations of a democratic society. We are striving to create a knowledge based society through personal commitment and involvement tempered with science and rationality. The ultimate goal is to gain self-reliance through education.

Through investment in higher educational, economic and social development can be facilitated and accelerated. Because of the multiplayer affect of developed human resources, education as in investment in development is recognized in our national planning.

During British Raj as well as Pakistani rule, the goal of economic policy was dependency and as a consequence no great demand was placed on education in terms of producing qualified manpower. The policy makers were busy in preserving the existing system by restricting people from developing critical abilities and creative potentials.

In a slightly different context, some of the donor agencies and developed countries tend to reinforce doubts about higher education and argue more for elementary education. However, higher education has special importance because it produces person and ideas to sustain all other facets and levels of education. Higher education provides the wide variety of sophisticated manpower needed by agriculture, administration, science, technology, as well as policy makers to plan and execute national development. The direct role of education in increasing food production and enhancing productivity in many sectors including readymade garments is self-evident. As we look into the higher educational achievement of developed countries, we can note that we have a long way to go. The enrolment in our higher education level is only 6% as against 11.9% in India , 29.3% in Malaysia , 37.3% in Thailand and 83.2% in USA . Taking the developed countries as a whole, the enrolment exceeds 50%.

Given the importance of higher education in socio-economic transformation, there are some critical issues which need to be kept in forefront in making decision relating to promotion of higher education.

Excellence calls for operations at the frontiers of knowledge and to be world-competitive i.e. higher education must be of the highest quality and at the same time relevant both to the individual and society. Achievement of high quality is complex involving selection of teachers and students on merit, strengthening of the infrastructure of institutions, modernization, changes in curriculum as well as upgrading quality and performance of the faculty.

Higher education in the national context should ensure wider awareness and breadth of knowledge on the part of the students as well as the cultivation of a sense of value and purpose conducive to effective citizenship. Education of both professional and generalist nature must have the scope to build awareness of our history, cultural tradition, together with the subject knowledge to permit attainment of our national goal of developing an equitable and harmonious society. At the tertiary level, students must be provided with opportunities to develop distinctive philosophy and personalities to embody the democratic nature of our society.

Education should be not only rigorous but also relevant. This relevance relates to social circumstance, employment potentialities, possibilities of growth and development within the country, region as well as in the global context. Implementation of such a program will require moving away from ivory-tower approach of involving bookish knowledge to problem solving approach. Thus, implementation of relevant programs will involve significant departure from the old patterns of teaching to facilitate learning.

Creation of new knowledge of both abstract and applied types is naturally expected from institutions of higher learning. Academia should consist of curious minds which would be excited through innovation, discovery or application of knowledge to new situations. Inspiration of research activities, are derived from consideration of excellence at global level as well as solving problems faced by the society. This has also a relevance dimension since research activities should be linked to the social, cultural, economic and natural environment with focus on problems of local and national development.

Faculty is the main vehicle of education and has to assume the role of a critic as well as providing leadership in constructive direction. Then again, on the face of knowledge explosion, the faculty has to keep themselves up to date and be prepared to learn continuously to contribute to change. There is also the need for adopting new methodology of teaching involving field work projects, seminars, simulatory exercises, problem solving sessions, tutorials, term papers, etc. Faculty need to equip themselves with new tools and traits to promote interactive methods of instructions. Such creative opportunities naturally pose big challenge to faculty as well as high educational institutions.

Higher education has some element of global mobility, but much student mobility takes place outside the framework of any structured exchange programme. It is to be noted that many countries regarded higher education as a significant export segment and as a source of additional income. This leads to brain drain and migration of highly qualified human capital and talent.

As the developing countries attempt to reduce this brain drain through local capacity building in higher education (government and non-government universities), developed countries are attempting to disrupt the process through maneuvers to create a free global market for higher education as a commodity.

Another disturbing phenomena facing developing countries including Bangladesh , is the entry and proliferation of cross-border institutions with second-rate, substandard degree programs. The regulators needs to be very cautious about such cross border institutions. Very recently the University Grants Commission of Bangladesh (UGC) has formulated regulations to permit entry of foreign universities which are contrary to legal provisions as well as discriminatory to local universities. While Government of Bangladesh (GoB) is working hard to close down the coaching centres in the country, the UGC formulated regulations have, among others, have provision for allowing ‘coaching centres of foreign universities as well as agency system. The GoB should look into these regulations from the commoditization perspective of developed countries, preserve the integrity of our youth and ensuring level playing field for local and foreign institutions.

Mention has already been made to very low participation rate (6%) in higher education in Bangladesh as against 12% in India , 37% in Thailand and 83% in USA . There are many reasons for such low participation, but non-availability of places and financial limitations are major causes. The establishment of 56 non-government universities have led to creation of some additional places, but the opportunity is still very limited. The establishment of additional government and non-government universities may ease the pressure. However, the opportunity of higher education is very limited in the country as can be observed from the data given below as against large number of HSC level students who passed in 2011:

Year	Number of Places (excluding Colleges and Open University)
2007	3,33,509
2008	3,47,265
2009	3,66,876

Number of Students Who Passed HSC or Equivalent Examination

Year	Number
2007	3,49,749
2008	3,71,380
2009	4,42,389
2010	5,33,369
2011	5,74,261

It has been observed that admission to higher education is not only limited but also highly inequitable. Children of professionals, businessmen, civil servants and teachers are almost exclusively represented in higher education institutions. A World Bank review of 1990 found that "the financing arrangements in the education system and the structure of enrollments result in highly inequitable distribution of public spending on education, with the 10 percent best educated people in a generation receiving as much as 76 percent of the cumulative public spending appropriate to the entire generation through publicly financed education". Although around 10 percent of the budget for higher education is allocated to students in the form of stipends and subventions, these do not benefit the poorer segment because of being awarded on the basis of merit, not on the basis of economic need. Thus, the marginal impact of public spending on the disadvantaged section is quite clear.

The limitation of financial resources is the other cause of low participation rate. The non-government universities despite being forced to charge fees, are facilitating entry through various support mechanisms like scholarship, grant, free studentship, fee waiver, rebate, deferred payment, campus job, special offer etc. It is also commendable to know from the media that GoB is seriously exploring creation of an educational loan fund of Tk. 100 crores to facilitate participation of needy students in tertiary level education. From the perspective of economic and social return, establishment of such fund is highly desirable and even increasing the size to Tk. 1,000 crores would be justified.

The critical role of higher education in development of a nation and its economic as well as social progress can hardly be over-emphasized. Inter-governmental organizations and think tanks dedicated to educational development issues have made commendable recommendations for country governments, donor agencies as well as development assistance providing countries to follow. The aspects requiring attention involves:

• enhancing investment in higher education by country governments and donors to broaden the funding base. After many decades of gap, Bangladesh has one donor project namely Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP) of Tk. 680 crores.

• fostering relevance through encompassing changes at international, regional, national and community levels.

• ensuring international cooperation to reverse the process of decline of institutions in the developing countries and threat to marginalization through cross-border commoditization

• expanding international cooperation from a spirit of academic solidarity as opposed export of services

• HSC Exams Result – Another year of good achievement , The Daily Star, August 27, 2007

• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Economic Growth in Developing Countries: Education Proves Key , IIASA Policy Brief # 3, August 2008

• Johanson, Richards, Bangladesh Education Sector Review , Bangladesh Higher Education , Part Two, The World Bank, 2000

• Miyan, Dr M Alimullah, An Update on Knowledge Based Area Development: A Step Towards Community Self-Reliance , IUBAT, Dhaka , December 2011

• Miyan, Dr M Alimullah, Challenge of Financing Higher Education from Inclusive Perspective , International Conference on Innovation and Inclusion in Banging: Issues, Strategies and Options, Kannur University, Kerala, India, February 3-4, 2011

• Miyan, Dr M Alimullah , Knowledge Based Area Development: A Step Towards Community Self Reliance, Second Edition 2010, IUBAT, Dhaka , ISBN 984-70060-0003-7

• Miyan, Dr M Alimullah, Role of Non-Government Universities in Higher Education , Journal of Bangladesh Studies, Volume 8 No. 1, ISSN 1529-0905, 2006

• University Grants Commission of Bangladesh , Strategic Planning for Higher Education in Bangladesh , Dhaka 2005

• The World Bank Task Force, Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise , 2000

• UNESCO, Policy Paper for Change and Development in Higher Education , 1995

• Higher educational institutions be government or non-government are necessary to create skilled manpower and knowledge for development of a society.

• Intellectual Capital is more important than physical capital for development

• Non-government universities supplementing Government universities for accommodation and access

• Access, innovation, technical education and resource optimization through dynamic curricula

• Poverty alleviation, income generation, human empowerment, entrepreneurship development, gender mainstreaming, meeting skill needs and progressive benefit from individual to national level

• Relevance – responsive to market and society, employment, capacity building, ethical standard, democracy, peace and equity

• Internationalization – increased relevance, marketability, expertise exchange, adoption of change

• Confront the new realities - Expansion, differentiation, knowledge revolution

• New challenges to Higher Education - Access, Massification, Privatization, Commoditization, Quality Assurance and Maintenance, Relevance, Digital Divide, International Mobility of Staff, Trends in Donor Policies

• Multidisciplinary education – critical for enhancing human quality – a must for national growth and development

• According to WEI, China , among OECD members, has more graduates and resulting faster economic growth

• Developing countries shifting focus from physical asset to intellectual assets

• Pre-Independence Education – policy to create economic dependency, NO demand on education

• Higher education needed for creating sophisticated manpower needed by different sector of economy

• Development vs Education - Bangladesh 6%, India 11.9%, Malaysia 29.3%, Thailand 37.3% and USA 83.2%

• Government's initiative and creation of a Fund of Tk. 100 crore needs to be increased to 1,000 crore

• fostering relevance through encompassing changes at international, regional, national and community levels.

• ensuring international cooperation to reverse the process of decline of institutions in the developing countries and threat to marginalization through cross-border commoditization

• expanding international cooperation from a spirit of academic solidarity as opposed export of services

F:\IUBAT 0-2008\Miyan's Papers\Critical Role of Higher Education in National Development.docx

***** Vice-Chancellor and Founder, IUBAT — International University of Business Agriculture and Technology. 4 Embankment Drive Road (off Dhaka-Ashulia Road ), Sector 10, Uttara Model Town , Dhaka 1230, Bangladesh

Phone: 8923471, 896 3523-27, Fax: 892 2625, Cell: 01819224036, Email: miyan@iubat.edu, www.iubat.edu