Policy support for private universities can slow 'brain drain'

In Bangladesh, the higher you study, the bigger the risk of unemployment you have, according to the latest Labour Force Survey. 

Jobless rate is 12% for university graduates, the highest among all levels of educated youths. The rate was 11.2% in the last such survey done six years ago, showing that employment is becoming more difficult for youths with higher education.

Is this because Bangladesh produces more graduates than it needs? Or because graduates are not as skilled as required? 

To address both problems, university graduates will need to go abroad for jobs either to earn a living and lead a better life, or to improve their skills through higher training which universities here cannot ensure.

But despite the gloomy prospect of jobs for graduates, those who come out of private universities are more likely to get into jobs earlier than their peers from the public universities. An earlier study by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies revealed that 44% of private university graduates are employed, compared to 32% of those who graduated from public universities.

Private universities choose subjects which are in good demand in the job market, they prepare their courses and curriculum accordingly, strictly follow their academic schedules, groom their students with necessary soft-skills for future career and help them connect to the job market through arranging job fairs and corporate events. These initiatives keep private university graduates ahead of those from public universities in the race for jobs in corporate and other fast-growing private sector jobs.

But the job market has not grown enough to absorb as many graduates that are coming out every year from various disciplines — business administration, computer science, electronics and electrical, mechanical and civil engineering, and so on.

The most-coveted government jobs like BCS often elude private university graduates because of the traditional arrangement of cadre services based on few disciplines and not incorporating many emerging subjects in modern day university curriculum.

Biotechnology and genetic engineering, for instance, is one of these subjects being studied in private universities.      

A biotechnology professor of a public university gives a gloomy picture of job prospects for nearly a thousand biotech grads coming out of 19 public universities and four private universities in Bangladesh. 

"They experience nothing but disappointment and discrimination,"  Md Mehadi Sohag, Assistant Professor at the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Jagannath University, wrote in an article for The Business Standard in October.  

A few biotech graduates are employed in the pharmaceuticals and food industries. "But, when it comes to research institutes, the number is either extremely negligible or null," Mehadi, also the general secretary of the Bangladesh Association of Biotechnology Graduates, says, showing how the biotechnology graduates are unwelcome in government's research-oriented posts in national level specialised organisations, including those in agriculture and livestock research.  

Biotechnology graduates have no place even in the National Agricultural Research System (NARS), though all of the research centres are establishing recombinant DNA technology facilities and launching biotech-oriented research projects, he points out.

If this happens to one of the cutting-edge modern branches of biological sciences that draw top scoring students, nothing much to speak about other disciplines.  

Unlike many reputed global institutions, private universities do not receive regular funding either from the government or the private sector, requiring the students to bear the cost burden in full. Inadequate assets do not allow them much scholarships for their students.  They have to buy land for their campuses, build infrastructures on their own, with no dormitories either for teachers or for students.

Yet, they spend more than the public universities in research, though the amount is nothing if compared with  the minimum global standard.

The result is reflected in the global rankings, where Bangladeshi universities hardly find a place among the first 1,000.

Eight American universities, known as Ivy League, are private institutions. During a six-year period (2010–2015), these eight universities — Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania — received nearly $42 billion in direct payments, tax subsidies, grants and other forms of financial support from the US government. These institutions, all private and non-profit, also receive billions in funding from top foundations.

Being non-profit educational institutions, the Ivy League pays no tax on investment gains. In FY2014 alone, their tax-free subsidy on endowment gains amounted to $3.4 billion, or nearly $60,000 per student. Other payments and entitlements for these institutions cost American taxpayers $120,000 in government money, subsidies, and special tax treatment per undergraduate student, writes Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, which tracks government spending in education.

In contrast, VAT was imposed on private universities in Bangladesh and students had to stage street agitations to have the tax waived a few years back.

All the eight Ivy League universities have beautiful, historical campuses. In Bangladesh, only a few of more than a hundred private universities have their own campuses, with many still struggling to manage a campus on at least one acre of land.

Yet they are helping thousands of youths every year to pursue higher studies. With limited resources, they are offering research facilities for students and teachers.

Private universities spend higher on research and have better teacher-student ratio than public ones.  

With continued funds from the government and the companies, the Ivy League universities have built a $119 billion endowment fund, which will be enough for offering full-ride scholarship for all their students until 2068, even if they do not get any new fund.

Bangladeshi private universities, which started their journey three decades back, are not that privileged as their graduates need to go abroad for higher skills and training, and even to make a living.

However, it is a great struggle for university graduates seeking to go abroad on student visas. Quite a few scholarships, fully or partially funded, are on offer for thousands of undergrads and postgrads waiting in long queues for studying abroad. But they have to go through language skill tests, send a swamp of emails to universities and professors, complicated documentation process which may take them from schools to education boards to foreign ministry, and then waiting for a call from visa office, which keeps applicants waiting for months, and even years, because of the Covid-19-induced backlogs. 

It is a tough test of patience and perseverance, apart from a good amount of money amid complications in paying fees as banks often cite dollar shortage.

Very few aspirants have full scholarships or full financial support from families. Others have to work abroad to earn money to pay tuition, rent and meals.

'Brain drain,' a term coined first in UK media amid exodus of British health professionals mainly to the US in the '60s, implies that skilled emigration is bad for the country of origin while it is 'brain gain' for the host country.

Some scholars, however, recommend against using the term 'brain drain' as they find these high-skilled professionals contribute to the global knowledge base, as well as send more remittance back home, help technology transfers and work as a bridge with potential investors.

Their return migration, or when they come back home, can have a positive impact on democratisation and on the quality of political institutions in the country of origin, research also shows.

The Economist magazine cites a study that shows how Indian, Chinese, Mexican diasporas helped their home countries back. Indian diaspora, largest in the world since 2010, is a powerful resource for India's government.

Michael Clemens, a migration policy expert and a former senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development, does not find any evidence to support the worries that more skilled immigration from less developed countries will harm those countries.

There is no serious research in social science that demonstrates that a policy of blocking talented or educated people from going abroad has ever caused any country to develop — "not in any sense, not to any degree," Michael tells in an interview at Oxford University.

But those who leave are not at fault. It is our incapacity to hold them back. Our economy is not big enough to employ them with good pay. Our universities cannot offer the best pay for the best teachers, who look for overseas jobs for a better living.

In contrast, we are often told about sending high skill professionals abroad for higher remittance. We send over 1.1 million workforce abroad, while remittance dropped to its lowest in months. Plunged into its worst crisis, Sri Lanka intensified its past efforts to make the process faster to send more talents abroad to bring in more foreign currencies.

Bangladesh is also trying to send qualified health professionals abroad where they have good demand. Developed countries, including Japan, wanted to recruit high-skilled professionals from Bangladesh. Countries like Germany, South Korea and Japan have long been assisting Bangladesh to develop technical skills for job markets, both for home and abroad.

If supported with adequate funds and favourable policies, private universities can develop high-skilled professionals, they can meet the skill gaps at home and get employed abroad as well. This will help the country in two ways-- reducing the need for students to go abroad for higher skill training and requiring less hiring of high-skilled professionals from abroad.    

Like capital, skills will flow where they are in demand. This is why the brain is called human capital. But movement of skills from one country to another is not always 'human capital flight.' When money moves out of a country, it rarely comes back. But brains tend to come back home, if there is good pay, better living standard, and a safer society. The home country needs to develop that environment for return migration, like China, India and Israel did for their expatriates.

Leaving the home country for a quite unfamiliar life in a different country is not always a pleasant experience. Why they make the tough choice is not unknown. A great deal of effort is needed to slow the trend, if you call it 'brain drain.