Published : 15 Mar 2014, 10:04 AM
One of my friends was asking me the other day why I am not a fan of Bollywood films. I answered, 'the more we are paying attention to Bollywood the less we are caring about developing our own film industry in Bangladesh. The colourful Bollywood comes to us for almost free!' My friend then argued, 'why can't we just try and produce a commercial film to match the vividness of Bollywood so that our audience could be turned away from Bollywood? We have so many talented performers, directors, story-writers. What's stopping us then?' My answer was, 'Money! We need entrepreneurs (producers) who would bet big sums on big budget films, engage talented artists, and take the risk that the film may or may not be appreciated by the audience. We need risk-takers'. I added, 'we also lack the modern technical skills required in various aspects of film production, such as sound, camera, visual and special effects, the many technical skills necessary to produce a modern day standout film.' I asked my friend, 'will you ever want to develop these skills and work in the film industry in a technical capacity which could turn financially more rewarding for us than a mere private job?' My friend answered, 'probably not'. We don't see these technical jobs as noble career options.
Even if we have or could manage sufficient money, we would not seek to investment in sectors like the film industry. One reason is we never count ourselves as risk-taking entrepreneurs. We only ache for secured white-collar jobs in banks or other public or private organizations with continuous flow of income, and can't really value the contributions of entrepreneurs and various technical skills in industrial sectors where a new idea could become extremely precious and create a valuable breakthrough.
The economy of Bangladesh resembles a capitalist economic system. Capitalist economic system means 'an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market' (from Merriam-Webster dictionary). Although the private sector economy of Bangladesh has grown quite significantly over the last two decades or so, there are still rooms for progress if Bangladesh wishes to become a globally competitive economy.
To keep the wheels of the capitalist economy running, we need production of goods and services for local and international markets; we also need industrial and technological innovation to sustain economic growth. They are the basic premises behind capitalist economy. Modern global economy is knowledge-based as well as technology-based. So, production of knowledge is paramount. Universities (I mean universities, degree colleges and equivalent institutions) produce a skilled workforce with the knowledge and skills necessary for performing research and development (innovation) in science, technology, business, policy, social welfare and so on. University graduates also perform managerial, administrative and bureaucratic functions of the economic entities. These are also called the white-collar jobs.
For production of goods and services, two elements are required. The first element is 'entrepreneurial firms' backed by capital-rich entrepreneurs that not only produce goods and services in existing industries, but also seek new opportunities in existing and emerging industries. The second element is a 'large workforce' that possesses the technical and trade (industrial labour) skills, and is able to turn advancing knowledge and technologies into innovative goods and services. Universities generally don't produce such technical skills (except various engineering disciplines). Vocational and technical institutes produce technical and industrial skills (through diploma or equivalent qualifications) in manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare and all other industries.
Apart from the contributions by foreign remittance and service sectors, manufacturing (e.g. garments) and agriculture make the major contributions to the economy of Bangladesh, up to nearly 40% of the country's GDP, as of financial year 2011-12 [1]. If we are to achieve economic growth through exploiting these sectors, we need a technically skilled workforce. The knowledge and skills of university graduates alone cannot be helpful. We need the industrial skills and the willingness to work in these sectors. The university-focused education system does not necessarily create a technically skilled workforce that is willing to perform the blue-collar jobs in garments, agricultural or other manufacturing and service sectors.
Firstly, in Bangladesh, our traditional social class-consciousness and our prejudice against trade (diploma) qualifications have created a society where technical jobs (the blue-collar jobs) performed by diploma graduates from vocational and technical institutes are not treated as noble as, or preferred over, the white-collar jobs performed by university graduates. It is true that white-collar and blue-collar jobs don't belong at the same hierarchy of the economic system. But, economic value-wise, they make complementary contributions to the economy from their respective hierarchies (see Figure 1). One cannot replace another; rather they complement each other, and are equally needed for the nation's multilayered economic functions.
The growth in the number of public and private universities in Bangladesh over the last two decades is quite phenomenal, from only 8 public universities before the 1990's to more than 30 by 2011, and from only 2 private universities before the 1990's to nearly 60 by 2012 [2]. This means that the size of knowledge-based skilled workforce has also grown quite dramatically. The private universities alone now teach nearly 200,000 students [3]. The question is whether there has been concomitant growth in the size of the white-collar job market for university graduates.
The growing number of private universities in Bangladesh are profiting from the exploitation of our social class-consciousness. Last year more than 58,000 students achieved GPA 5 in HSC. While it can be debated as to whether all of them will find a place in a public or private university, it's not hard to presume that possibly there won't be 58,000 white-collar jobs available for them at once when they all come out of universities in four to five years' time. Even if they can't enrol in a preferred university subject after finishing HSC, the so-called social class-consciousness and prejudice will restrain them from joining a vocational or technical institute where they could learn economically more rewarding industrial skills that better suit the needs of our industrial sectors. They would rather pay a huge sum of tuition to earn any tertiary degree from any private university, and then compete in the white-collar job market even through there are not sufficient opportunities for them in that job market.
Compared to the growth in the demand for public and private universities, the demand for vocational or technical institutes has not risen significantly over the last decade or so. Table 1 data show that although the number of vocational and technical institutes and the number of teachers in these institutes grew by 152% and 84%, respectively, from 2001 to 2007-08, the number of students grew by a meaner 62%. When Table 1 and Table 2 data are compared, we can see that 1.3 million students were enrolled in degree colleges and universities in 2007-08, whereas only around 59,000 students were enrolled in vocational and technical institutes. This small proportion of students (only 4% of total post-HSC students) in vocational and technical institutes will not be sufficient to support the growth of our industrial sectors.
Based on my limited experience with Australia's education system, when the students finish HSC, they choose one from three alternative career pathways. The students, who score high in HSC, enrol in universities, and later compete for white-collar jobs as well as jobs in research and development. Those, who miss out due to poor HSC score, enrol in technical institutes where they learn technical skills in areas such as business, IT, hospitality, construction, tourism, engineering, visual arts, community work etc. A third category of HSC students directly joins the workforce, primarily in retail and manufacturing sectors. Australia's workforce uniformly comprises university graduates with the knowledge- and research-based skills, graduates from technical institutes with technical and industrial skills, and high school graduates with the labour skills. According to May 2012 data published by Australian Bureau of Statistics [6], 1.2 million (57%) students were enrolled in higher education institutes in Australia, compared to around 0.9 million (43%) in technical and other similar institutes. This high proportion of technically-skilled workforce plays an important role in Australia's industrial and service sectors.
Secondly, the university-focused tertiary education system in Bangladesh only teaches the students how to earn a decent white-collar job. It does not create or promote entrepreneurial attitude among university graduates similar to that found in many Indian nationals. I met a few Indian nationals in Australia. They mentioned that when they save one rupee, the first idea that strikes them is how to invest that one rupee and turn it into ten rupees. This entrepreneurial attitude has created successive generations of small to big entrepreneurs in India who are contributing to the country's booming manufacturing-based economy. Our inclination for white-collar jobs and out prejudice against entrepreneurship prevent us from recognizing entrepreneurs as the key role players in the capitalist economy compared to the contributions of managerial or bureaucratic roles, and also prevent us from realizing that entrepreneurs are the most powerful and the most important source of growth in the capitalist economy.
Our economic system needs to develop two key elements. On the one hand, we need more risk-taking entrepreneurs with tangible (money) and intangible (knowledge, intellect) capital sources that will fuel new economic possibilities and create new economic ventures in various industrial sectors. As famous Austrian American classical economist Joseph Schumpeter describes, "… the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on" [7]. We need to change our attitude towards entrepreneurship. Our universities and other educational institutes need to create a culture that will foster entrepreneurship among students. In today's knowledge and technology-powered economy, university students need to build entrepreneurial capacity to be able to turn their knowledge and technology ideas into profitable products and services. Take for example Bill Gates of Microsoft, or Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, or Steve Jobs of Apple. They had innovative technology ideas in their possession. So they founded entrepreneurial firms to develop and turn their innovative ideas into highly successful products and technologies. We need similar attitudes among our university graduates.
On the other hand, we need to also change our attitude towards technical and industrial skills. We need to understand that by learning new technical and industrial skills and by exploiting them in our manufacturing (garments), agricultural and other new sectors, we can expect to reap stronger economic and financial returns. We need a higher proportion of technically-skilled independent workforce with entrepreneurial capacities who can create hundreds of small business ventures in existing and new industrial sectors with the help of a maturing banking sector. Only such a workforce can contribute to the economy through developing and improving our manufacturing and agricultural industries, and creating new industrial opportunities. We have to overcome our social class-consciousness and prejudice, learn to recognize and value the contributions to our economy from the different functional hierarchies, and make the initiatives to join the major revenue earning industries. Only then we can hope to collectively achieve an expected economic prosperity.
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Tariq Sadat is a PhD candidate at RMIT University, Australia.
Bibliography:
[1] 'Bangladesh Economic Review 2012', Chapter 2: GDP, Saving and Investment, Chapter 8: Industry, Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh, viewed August 22, 2013,
[2] 'List of universities in Bangladesh', Wikipedia, viewed August 22, 2013,
[3] 'Private universities now', The Daily Star, June 6, 2013
[4] 'Education Statistics', Ministry of Education, Bangladesh, viewed August 22, 2013,
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[5] 'Education Sector in Bangladesh: What Worked Well and Why under the Sector-Wide Approach?' Evaluation Study (December 2008), Asian Development Bank,
[6] 'Education and Work, Australia, May 2012', Australian Bureau of Statistics,
[7] 'Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy', Chapter 12, Section I, Page 117, Publisher: Routledge (London), Joseph Schumpeter (1943)