A reason to celebrate university convocations

It is a coincidence that the 22nd Convocation of American International University – Bangladesh (AIUB) is being held on the 22nd of February 2025! However, the journey to the finishing line of 2,547 AIUB graduates was not an act of providence.

An intuitive but staid question that follows this festive season of convocations in Bangladesh is: What ought to be the meaningful and tangible reasons for a university to celebrate convocations, and how can we measure them?

Amidst the flurry of traditional impressionistic celebratory reasons, this article highlights a few benchmarks —measured in the context of AIUB and, by extension, can be used by any other universities— celebrating convocations. The data used in the article were collected for two research papers on scale development to measure university reputation and student motivation in transnational education settings, published (and upcoming) in the Journal of Higher Education and Research .Emphasising the need to reflect with an Olympian detachment, the article argues that the hard work ahead to continue delivering quality education and remaining student-focused – as demonstrated by AIUB amid all challenges – should be the key reason to celebrate convocation.

Universities are hubs of producing and disseminating knowledge, defined as justified true belief. Academics must reflect on how universities produce knowledge and, more importantly, how it is perceived and absorbed by students. 

Much like Nalanda Mahabihar's circle of scholars, thriving under the patronage of the rulers of ancient Bengal or the Inklings in Oxford, initiated by Tolkien and Lewis, universities have always had intellectual circles to reflect and perfect ideas, trends and direction of knowledge production.

At a fractured time, reflection with an Olympian detachment can be profoundly productive in reinforcing the much-needed intellectual bond and alignment in knowledge production. The famed Lewis (1955) quote, "Nothing, I suspect, is more astonishing in any man's life than the discovery that there do exist people very, very like himself," lends much credence to such a quest for intellectual bonding and alignment amongst academics of diverse disciplines.

Convocations, among other things, offer the opportunity to flock and forge intellectual friendships with like-minded scholars, reflecting the quality of knowledge that our universities produce. Such reflections, when keeping the students' perception at the centre, can make convocations rich, complete, and meaningful.

The context of this year's convocations in Bangladeshi universities is unique. The 2025 graduates have witnessed and, in most cases, contributed to the country's epochal transition.

While the political dimension of the transition is beyond the scope of this article, it is relevant to note that the guts, grit, and sacrifice of the private university students marked a critical turning point in the July-August student-led uprising. Indeed, the giving of the private university students in this historic movement was not just a drop in the ocean, but perhaps the entire ocean in a drop.

That said, universities—both public and private—have faced enormous challenges to return to normalcy. Syndicates, Academic Councils, and Faculties scrambled to revise and adjust academic plans and modalities to compensate for the loss in academic activities and deliver quality teaching and learning experiences to their students. So, how did the students perceive their university experience while passing through this fractured time?  

The quality of education – as perceived by the students - can be a useful benchmark to celebrate convocations. To measure perceived service quality, a unidimensional scale adapted from Latif et al. (2019) was used to capture the six components of service quality in higher education, namely (1) teachers and teaching, (2) administrative and support services, (3) knowledge transmission, (4) extracurricular activities, (5) institutional improvement, and (6) leaders' responsiveness to students' needs   

The article draws on stable data from 323 AIUB students, obtained through voluntary participation in a survey with the informed consent of each participant using a Google form. Amongst the respondents, 74.9% were male, 25.1% female, and their main subject areas of studies included applied sciences (e.g., computer science, engineering), totalling 96.6%, Humanities (1.2%), Natural and formal sciences (0.9%), Social sciences: 0.6%, and Other subjects: 0.6%.

Proxy indicators for all six components were used to capture students' perceptions on a seven-point Likert scale. Responses like strongly agree, agree, and slightly agree were grouped as positive responses, while strongly disagree, disagree, and slightly disagree were taken as negative responses.

The overall response suggests an overwhelming number of students positively perceive AIUB's quality of education.

For example, when asked if "knowledge is effectively developed and imparted in this university," 84.5 percent responded positively, 5.5 percent had a negative perception, and 10 percent were neutral.

When asked if "a wide range of recreational and personal/professional development activities are available at this university" - a proxy indicator for extracurricular activities - 81.2% of students responded positively, while 8.3% responded negatively. Students' perceptions of proxy questions related to the quality of administrative and support services and the leadership's response were also primarily positive (77.1% positive response for administrative and support services and 76.2% on university leaders' responsiveness to students' needs).

Finally, the students' perception of the quality of the teachers and teaching recorded a whopping 85.5% positive response, while a meagre 6.1% of students held negative perceptions.

Guaranteeing quality education and making our universities the hub of producing future leaders for Bangladesh and beyond demands not being complacent about what we have achieved but what we can and should aspire to achieve. The quest should be to improve further in all six benchmarks of service quality—preferably with a target of 90% or above positive student perception.  

Universities deliver job-ready graduates and the next generation of thinkers, scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders. As a new cohort of graduates joins the alumni, universities should focus on the hard work ahead to continue providing quality education, measured against students' perceptions.

The tempo and scale of building back a better Bangladesh hinge on creating the next generation of enlightened and all-rounded leaders – a task that our universities should remain committed to pursuing with passion and professionalism.

Our spirited and honest commitment to providing quality education—a task that entails teamwork by all university elements and echelons—should undergird our reasons to celebrate convocations.