Scope of the book
In its myriad interpretations and manifestations, the development and spread of privatisation – based on neoliberal policy doctrines – have become a predominant world phenomenon since the 1970s. Higher education is not an exception; in fact, as Slaughter and Rhodes (2004, p. 1) argue, the way in which higher education has been transformed, shaped and used in recent decades could be identified as “academic capitalism”. We could say that the rise of new global economy has changed the relationship between university and society in fundamental ways. However, the way privatisation is enacted in different countries does not look similar; rather, local contexts almost always determine local privatisation processes, which Appadurai (1996, p. 10) calls “vernacular” forms of privatisation.
This book addresses the complexities of and challenges in the privatisation of higher education and the intricate politics behind it in the context of modern-day, postcolonial Bangladesh. While presenting a chronology of the evolution of higher education as its broad canvas, it focuses on a number of key aspects of the privatisation of higher education in Bangladesh from a distinctly postcolonial1 perspective. It includes a consideration of financial modes of higher education, quality assurance and its governance and administration, as well as the notions of and debate surrounding the private university as a ‘not-for-profit’ or ‘for-profit’ institution. The book explores these issues in relation to the desires of stakeholders in developing a distinctly ‘Bangladeshi form’ of privatisation model and its practices in higher education. Against this backdrop, the book also critically examines the roles local and global forces have been playing in shaping such a Bangladeshi form of privatisation. The critical discussion adds complexity to existing discourses of ‘globalisation from above’ and situates the often-idiosyncratic ways in which higher education reform has been shaped in this part of the world.
The study showcased in the book is developed based on a five-year empirical research that has employed contemporary theories from political and social sciences, economics and education to problematise current debates on monetary approaches into the higher education sector in Bangladesh. To our knowledge, a book of this scope and intention has not been published offering both public and private sector higher education of Bangladesh as the primary focus.
Well into this relatively new century already, the purposes of higher education continue to be determined by market discourses that have aggressively regulated global higher education systems in past decades. Since the 1980s, it has been a worldwide trend for universities to adopt privatisation models of knowledge, skills, curriculum, finance, accounting and management organisation. This book sees the need to respond to these phenomena by offering frameworks of understanding offered through the chapters of this book, as a way of analysing, making sense of, and then appropriating these discourses. In doing so we also attempt to locate the trajectory of future épistémès (Foucault, 1977) that are likely to shape the evolution of private provision of higher education in the country.
In particular, in the backdrop of market forces having usurped the centre stage in shaping the nature of higher education over the last three decades (Chowdhury & Le Ha, 2014; Sidhu, 2005), this book discusses the nature and degree to which neoliberalism has become a prominent feature and the raison d’être of private higher education in postcolonial Bangladesh. More specifically, the book focuses on how historical, political and socio-economic processes have influenced contemporary higher education policy affairs and shaped privatisation processes in the Bangladeshi higher education sector in ways sometimes conspicuously different from what is experienced elsewhere in the global context.
In this sense, the book offers new ways to reconstruct our relationship with higher education, which allow the negotiation of sociocultural and socio-political frictions, individual, institutional and national tensions, and the various ways in which we seek legitimation of our educational practices through engaging with our peers in the wider discourse community of teachers and researchers. In order to commence the discussion, it is first important to understand the historical context which provides important perspectives, especially given the postcolonial framework we have adopted in our analysis.
Historical context of higher education in Bangladesh
Higher education development in Bangladesh has always been part of a political process (Chowdhury & Kabir, 2014). Therefore, it is useful to briefly trace the political processes and the historical roots of the introduction of a Western higher education in Bangladesh and the importance of identifying these political processes and historical antecedents for understanding the nature of the contemporary higher education system and the present-day educational cultures and values in Bangladesh.
The beginning of a Western education system in the Indian subcontinent might be traced back to 1835 (Aggarwal, 2007). The now infamous ‘Macaulay’s Minute’ of 1835 triggered the rapid reformation aligned with British-based education system in the Indian Subcontinent (Zastoupil & Moir, 1999). Based on Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 the British colonial rulers formulated the English Education Act 1835 in which they set up the aim, content and medium of instruction of Education in British-India. In time, universities as institutions adopted the Westernised model with English as the medium of instruction and the introduction of new areas of studies. Modelled on the London University, the first three modern universities in the Indian Subcontinent were set up in three metropolitan cities of Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bombay (now Mumbai) and Madras (now Chennai) in 1857 (Vats, 2008), with another university in Lahore later in 1869 (Aggarwal, 2007). During this period, British education policies, such as Wood’s Despatch in 1854, also promoted the growth of higher education through the establishment of Colleges at the private level across British-India (Aggarwal, 2007).
Although within the territorial boundaries now comprising Bangladesh there was no university until 1921, some first-grade affiliated colleges of East Bengal, for example, Rajshahi College (1873), Dhaka College (1881) and Jagannath College (1884), were entitled to offer higher studies under the University of Kolkata at that time (University Grants Commission, 2009a). Therefore, we could say that the origin of modern higher education in Bangladesh could only be traced back to when the British colonial regime established the first university – University of Dhaka – in 1921.
Historians broadly view the decision to establish a university in Bangladesh as compensation for the annulment of the partition of Bengal in 1905. The Partition provided a hope to the majority Muslim community in East Bengal, and Assam (now one of the provinces of India) for socioeconomic and political development. However, the Bengal partition was lifted in 1911 in the wake of massive protests by West Bengal-based intelligentsia groups and powerful Hindu leaders in India. Such a decision left deep anger and dissatisfaction among the Muslim community of East Bengal (University Grants Commission, 2009a). Subsequently, the Muslim community led by the Muslim leaders met the British Viceroy Lord Hardinge and expressed their fear that the annulment could impede the educational progress of Muslims in these regions. To assuage the feelings of the Muslim community and to ensure the progression of the ‘backward’ Muslim community in these regions, the British Raj promised to establish a university in the capital of East Bengal (now Bangladesh) – Dhaka (University Grants Commission, 2009a).
It was expected that the socio-economic, political and cultural conditions of the majority Muslim populace in the then East Bengal would be uplifted by ensuring modern higher education (Rahman, 2009). However, the British rulers had created the University of Dhaka (DU) in East Bengal as a way of dealing with social unrest and political difficulties within the country they ruled (Chowdhury & Kabir, 2014). Indeed, they had intended to achieve political reconciliation between Muslims and Hindus in Bengal through the establishment of DU. The view of the British rulers was in fact expressed by the then DU Chancellor and the Governor of Bengal, Lord Lytton, in the course of the Convocation address in the University of Dhaka in 1922. He commented that the University of Dhaka was “an imperial compensation to the Muslims for the annulment of the partition of Bengal” (University Grants Commission, 2009a, p. xviii).
The entire process of the evolution of this university in East Bengal could be described using the words of the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Dhaka, Dr. P. J. Hartog, as the “political origin” of the institution (cited in Majumdar, Ghose, Chatterjee, Bandyopadhyay, & Chatterjee, 1994, p. 31). The espoused political agenda of British education in the Indian Subcontinent was to create a class that would be Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste (Macaulay, 1835, cited in McLeod, 2000). In particular, once India came under the direct rule of the British Royalty and Parliament in 1857, the British ruler designed and provided higher education “to a class of people whose sympathy it was necessary to win in the political interests of the Britishers” (Singh, 1989, p. 2).
The British eventually left the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 by splitting it into two countries – India and Pakistan – based on a predominantly religious Two-Nation theory. Since then, Bangladesh (then East Bengal) became East Pakistan as part of the newly formed colonial state of Pakistan. The state under Pakistani rulers (1947–1971) formulated several policy documents, for example, the 1957 Educational Reforms Commission for East Pakistan, the Commission on National Education in 1958 (Government of Pakistan, 1958), the New Education Policy in 1970; and set up five more universities in East Pakistan (University Grants Commission, 2009a). In its first National Educational Conference held in Karachi in 1947, the Pakistani rulers reassessed the British Education System in Pakistan and designated Islamic religious ideology as a vision across the entire education system. The Commission on National Education in 1959 asserted that the fundamental value of education is “to preserve the Islamic way of life.… The moral and spiritual values of Islam combined with the freedom, integrity, and strength of Pakistan should be the ideology which inspires our educational system” (Government of Pakistan, 1958, p. 11). The Pakistani rulers positioned religion, tradition and the past British traditions in the education system for building up Pakistani nationalism by ignoring the diverse socio-political and economic factors existing in different regions in Pakistan. As a new state, Pakistan designed its education system from its colonial past to construct the ‘citizens’ “in the same image – obedient, loyal, ...
