Empowering Leaders, Building Institutions: Why Bangladesh Needs to Establish an Independent Higher Education Commission for Private Universities in BD
Caption: Visionary Leadership for a New Era: Championing Reform through an Independent Higher Education Commission in Bangladesh
“Strong institutions are created by strong leaders—and strong leaders require room to lead.”
At the Crossroads of Promise and Constraint
The present higher education system in Bangladesh stands at a crossroads. Private universities have made spectacular strides since the Private University Act of 1992 was passed. Today, over 110 private universities have over half of all higher education students enrolled in their roles, positioning them not only as complementary players but also as the pivot of the nation’s intellectual future. The quality—or absence thereof—of these universities will decide Bangladesh’s capacity to innovate, its economic competitiveness, and its capacity to cultivate the next generation of leaders.
But for all their undeniable worth, private universities are still constrained by a governance system that refuses to let them become real agents of change. They are saddled with limited autonomy, excessive micromanaging, and no systematic cultivation of leadership. The issue is not a dearth of talent or vision—Bangladeshi academics have proved they can compete anywhere in the globe—but that the University Grants Commission (UGC) is more of a drag than an enabler.
Vice-chancellors, deans, and department chairs are typically chosen based on their qualifications as scholars, but once in office, they often find themselves managing compliance. Rather than focusing on strategic expansion, global collaborations, or research distinction, they spend hours waiting for UGC approvals—whether for curriculum changes, program initiations, overseas collaborations, or small research grants.
As one exasperated academic administrator described it:
“We are meant to compete with the world, yet our regulators tie our hands. Here, leadership is reduced to paperwork and waiting for approval.”
This procedure takes meaning away from leadership. It transforms responsibilities of vision and accountability into ceremonial roles of authority. Leaders cannot lead; they can only administer.
The purpose of this article is to argue that the fate of Bangladesh’s private universities depends on enabling academic leadership. To achieve this, there must be a definite shift: investment in developing leaders, autonomy accompanied by accountability, and building governance structures that reward innovation instead of punishing it. Learning from South and East Asia—Singapore’s autonomous university boards, Malaysia’s Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT), and South Korea’s system-wide governance reforms—the article demonstrates that when leaders are empowered and trusted, institutions flourish.
Unless Bangladesh learns similar reforms and resets UGC’s role, private universities will remain trapped in cycles of average quality, tormented by bureaucratic lethargy rather than being driven by the desire to excel.
Why Leadership Matters for Institutional Growth
Leadership is the most critical determinant of whether a university thrives or falls behind. Across the globe, empowered academic leaders have led the charge for institutional transformation.
Consider Singapore: when the government transitioned away from a ministerially governed university board structure early in the 2000s, NUS and NTU leaders were free to design curricula, hire foreign faculty, and build industry partnerships without needing permission from the minister. Both institutions were placed in the international top 20 within two decades. The same applies to South Korea’s reforms during the 1990s, when institutions were accorded autonomy to diversify sources of funding, internationalize, and align programs with the needs of the labor market.
The reverse is the case in Bangladesh. UGC micromanaging chokes leadership. Vice-chancellors spend time seeking approvals rather than building strategies. Dean’s pen creative curricula only to see them languish in approval queues. Department chairs attempt to facilitate faculty research but cannot distribute funds without clearance.
A dean at a top private university described this frustration succinctly:
“We developed a master’s degree in data science because there was unequivocal demand in the marketplace. Curriculum was ready, faculty was ready, and employers were ready. Approval from the UGC, though, took nearly two years. India and Malaysia were already graduating data science students when we opened. We lost credibility, and our students lost opportunity.”
This situation illustrates how UGC delays not only kill innovation but also discredit the legitimacy of academic leadership. Students and parents lose confidence in institutions whose top leaders cannot execute timely programs. Professors lose enthusiasm when their work is repeatedly blocked or vetoed. And the nation loses competitiveness when its universities lag behind regional peers.
The lesson is that leadership is most significant when leaders have authority. Without it, leadership becomes symbolic and not practical.
Building Leadership Capacity: Training and Development
Educational leadership requires a strange set of skills. A vice-chancellor must be capable of articulating vision, managing finances, inspiring staff, building partnerships, and navigating politics—without sacrificing academic integrity. Deans and chairs must balance the interests of the faculty with institutional needs, foster innovation, and maintain quality research and instruction. Those are challenging assignments, and they cannot be acquired by scholarship.
In Bangladesh, however, systematic training of academic administrators is nonexistent or minimal. Administrative jobs are often assumed to be based on academic credentials or political loyalties rather than managerial training. Once in office, leaders are expected to “learn on the job.” Without formal training, many muddle through, mistake by mistake—a costly exercise for institutions and individuals alike.
A department chair recalled:
“My PhD trained me as a researcher and not as a manager. Suddenly, I was responsible for budgets, student grievances, faculty member conflicts, and strategic planning. There is nowhere to learn these tasks in Bangladesh. When we try to arrange international workshops or collaborations to build leadership, UGC keeps it pending or rejects the project as non-essential.”
Other Asian countries have invested a lot in leadership development.
Malaysia set up the Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT) to systematically train deans, vice-chancellors, and chairs. AKEPT offers governance, financial management, and strategic leadership training. AKEPT graduates assert that they are more confident and can act—because they too have the power of action. Malaysian scholars benefit directly from leaders who have the authority to sanction funds and collaborations with immediate effect.
Execution of executive training for its academic leaders at international organizations like Harvard, INSEAD, and regional leadership centers ensures that Singapore’s leaders are given global exposure, managerial skills, and an international perspective.
India has tested leadership workshops under the University Grants Commission and the Indian Institutes of Management. While clumsily rolled out, the tests show a realization that leadership cannot be a matter of luck.
Sri Lanka, with World Bank-supported projects, launched leadership development initiatives for administrators at higher education institutions. Even in a bureaucratic setup, these initiatives improved governance capacity in certain universities.
Bangladesh lags far behind. There is no AKEPT counterpart or Singapore’s leadership academies. Even when universities attempt to do something independently, UGC hinders or delays such initiatives.
The solution is straightforward: Bangladesh needs to establish a National Leadership Academy for Higher Education to prepare vice-chancellors, deans, and chairs. Such an academy would arrange formal courses, mentorship programs, and fellowships abroad. But unless UGC steps back and allows the universities the autonomy to fund and organize such training independently, even this solution risks turning into another bureaucratic formality.
Eliminating Micromanagement: The Autonomy to Lead
The most damaging hindrance to university leadership in Bangladesh could be micromanaging by the UGC. In theory, UGC must remain the protector of quality and accountability. In practice, it becomes a gatekeeper that delays, obstructs, and often stops innovation.
A vice-chancellor mentioned a lost opportunity:
“We negotiated a twinned MBA with a top-ranked foreign university. The partner was eager, the staff were enthusiastic, and the employers were open. But the UGC clearance lasted 18 months. In that time, the partner had cold feet and backed out. Instead of welcoming innovation, our regulators strangulated it.”
Micromanagement infects all aspects of leadership:
Syllabus reform: Reforming an existing curriculum by incorporating new subjects like AI or renewable energy has very long clearance periods. By the time clearance is received, the curriculum is outdated.
New courses: Adding a new degree or certificate can take years of back-and-forth with UGC. This puts universities perpetually behind in responding to labor market changes.
Research funding support: Even minor internal research grants must be approved by UGC. Faculty members are deprived of the autonomy to undertake time-bound projects.
International partnership: MOUs with foreign universities or visiting professors are routinely subject to approval by UGC, which is usually too late.
Comparisons emphasize the price tag:
India, despite its red tape, has begun shifting to outcome-based accreditation. Institutions are assessed on research productivity, graduate employability, and international collaborations. This encourages innovation rather than stifles it.
Pakistan’s HEC sets general standards but offers universities curricular autonomy and more autonomy in collaboration. Academics there can move more rapidly on foreign endeavors than their Bangladeshi counterparts.
Singapore and Hong Kong provide universities with autonomy through self-governing boards. Government intervention is reserved for finances and strategic direction, not day-to-day decision-making.
South Korea’s change provided universities with autonomy to receive diversified income and become global, catapulting them higher in world rankings.
Bangladesh’s model is the reverse. UGC clearance is needed even for a small initiative. Leaders are not allowed to act boldly. Innovation is penalized with delay.
Unless UGC moves from process-based micromanagement to performance-based accountability, Bangladeshi leaders will be impotent.
Faculty Perspectives: On the Frontline of Frustration
While policy reasoning usually patronizes vice-chancellors, boards of trustees, or the UGC, it is the academic staff—professors, lecturers, and researchers—who face the most drastic ramifications of over-controlling administration. Staff are caught between the regulatory measures imposed by UGC and the limitations set by university leadership. Their day-to-day existence manifests the immediate relationship of micromanaging and delayed sanctioning into punctured teaching, stalled research, and diminished opportunities for students.
A leading professor in a well-known private university described how regulatory jams strangle intellectual ingenuity:
“We want to develop new interdisciplinary majors that reflect the diversity of the modern workplace—e.g., a blend of media studies and data analytics, environmental science and public policy. Our dean is supportive. But each proposal gets stuck in UGC’s approval process. When clearance comes, finally, the industry needs have shifted, and student interest has cooled. Innovation is suffocated before it even begins.”
To junior professors, such limitations appear all the more depleting. A lecturer from Dhaka explained how UGC micromanaging robs teaching and research of being punctual:
“They genuinely want to assist us, our leaders, but when even a small research grant or scholarly collaboration needs to be approved by UGC, we lack the enthusiasm. Research thrives on timeliness. Leadership without real powers is symbolic not functional. It turns us into risk-averse people, and in academia, it is where the innovations take place.”
These sentiments echo widely. Conducted surveys of Dhaka and Chattogram teachers reveal chronic complaints: inordinate delays for UGC clearance of new courses, bans on foreign collaborations, and administrative hurdles for travel to conferences or foreign research grants. Teachers across the board emphasized that UGC regulatory measures—intended to uphold quality—succeed only in undermining quality by discouraging timely innovation.
A mid-career researcher explained how a promising collaboration fell through under UGC’s slow process:
“We had locked in interest from a European partner for a climate resilience project—a sector immediately applicable to Bangladesh’s development issues. But because UGC approval took almost a year, the window of funding shut. Our Indian and Sri Lankan colleagues progressed while we remained behind. The tragedy is that it wasn’t a question of talent or preparedness; it was plain governance paralysis.”
Their consequences extend beyond projects. They affect professional decisions. Many qualified young scholars increasingly seek alternatives in other nations where leadership autonomy entails real support of the faculty. An author who recently moved to Malaysia described:
“I did not leave because of pay. I left because of academic freedom. My dean in Malaysia can approve seed money within weeks, not years. Even committed leaders here cannot assist us because their hands are tied by UGC.”
The cost in human terms is ghastly: a brain drains of the very brains needed to push Bangladesh’s higher education to the next level.
Regional Comparisons: A Tale of Contrasts
The experience of the faculty in Bangladesh is sharply different from other Asian countries, where governance reforms have facilitated leaders to support academic communities more effectively.
India: While India’s system, too, is bureaucratic, reforms by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) have shifted the focus from process to outcome. The faculty members now have a setting conducive to teaching innovation and research productivity. Private colleges such as Ashoka and O.P. Jindal Global University demonstrate the way empowered leadership creates fertile soil for faculty-initiated innovation. Bangladeshi faculty view UGC delaying or blocking the same innovations, in contrast.
Pakistan: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) offers universities greater leeway to frame curricula and pursue foreign collaborations. There, instructors typically remark that although political interference remains an issue, administrators have greater discretionary authority to approve projects and research grants. Bangladeshi scholars remain trapped in a situation where UGC clearance is required for every step, turning opportunities into missed potential.
Sri Lanka: While still grumbling about bureaucracy, professors have experienced shorter approval times for modest research grants with the help of directed reforms supported by the World Bank, and academic administrators have been trained. Incremental empowerment reduces the likelihood of junior academics leaving the system to go abroad. In Bangladesh, it would be impossible without UGC reform.
Malaysia: AKEPT trains deans and department chairs to support the faculty directly. There, leaders are given the authority to grant funding and enable cross-disciplinary projects, especially in priority fields such as biotechnology and digital innovation. Faculty morale is significantly improved. In Bangladesh, foreign-trained deans return with new ideas, only to be held back by UGC procedures.
Singapore: Professors can work in Asia’s most enabling setting. With university councils that act independently and provide broad latitude to presidents and deans, research proposals and program creation move with remarkable speed. As one NUS faculty member said, an interview published in print: “Here, leadership doesn’t block; it accelerates. When your dean says yes, it actually means yes.” In Bangladesh, however, a dean’s “yes” can be meaningless until UGC bureaucracy is settled.
South Korea: In the 1990s, South Korea introduced autonomy reforms that allowed universities to internationalize on an aggressive scale. The faculty had easier approval for collaboration, competitive research grants, and international faculty exchange. The reforms also provided leaders with the power to act authoritatively. Bangladeshi faculties remain bogged down in UGC’s culture of delay as their regional counterparts push forward ahead of them.
A Central Truth
The contrast between East and South Asia spotlights a brutal fact: professors thrive when leadership is free to empower them. Empowering leadership has nothing to do with ceremony, titles, or status; it is about creating conditions in which professors are empowered to innovate in the classroom, receive research grants, and engage globally without stalling and deliberating over procuring permissions.
Without such authority, Bangladesh’s universities will continue to export their brightest brains abroad. Without empowered academics, faculty members cannot create innovative courses, access timely research grants, or establish international collaborations. And without empowered academics, universities cannot offer quality education or become internationally recognized.
Here is what one academic had to say about it:
“We are not looking for miracles. We are looking for trust—trust in our leadership to remain with us, and trust in us to deliver. Without that trust, we are going through the motions as the rest of the region moves forward.”
Comparative Lessons: South Asia and East Asia
The challenge in Bangladesh is not singular, but the regional comparison is instructive.
India: Bureaucracy persists, yet reforms via accreditation emphasize performance. Ashoka and O.P. Jindal Global private institutions thrive as regulators allowed innovation. UGC in Bangladesh delays the same.
Pakistan: HEC has a dual role—regulator and facilitator. It funds faculty research and grants curricular autonomy. Bangladeshi professors are restrained, not promoted.
Sri Lanka: Similarly bureaucratic, but World Bank-funded reforms made research approvals rational. Bangladeshi universities trail behind.
Malaysia: Professionalized leadership of AKEPT. Their leaders can help their faculty well. UGC prevents Bangladeshi leaders from doing that.
Singapore: Empowering boards make strong leaders. There is actual accountability, and yet innovation occurs. UGC in Bangladesh is the opposite model—control rather than empowerment.
South Korea: Autonomy reforms under autonomy pushed internationalization and world ranking. Bangladesh lags because its leaders are not empowered.
The regional lesson is clear: countries that empower leadership thrive. Countries that cling to bureaucratic micromanaging lag.
A Roadmap for Bangladesh: Governance for Growth
To fully realize the potential of Bangladesh’s private universities, the governance system needs reform to empower leaders and reduce UGC micromanagement. Three pillars emerge:
Leadership Development
Bangladesh should establish a National Leadership Academy of Higher Education, modeled after Malaysia’s AKEPT. The academy must develop vice-chancellors, deans, and chairs systematically with strategic management training, financial leadership, international partnerships, and innovation. International fellowships and mentorship programs must be integrated. But most importantly, universities must be allowed to fund and implement such initiatives without undue delay from UGC.
Autonomy with Accountability
Universities must be freed from UGC’s micro-approvals. Accountability must be outcome-based: graduate employability, publication of research, international collaborations, and rankings. Leaders must be empowered to launch programs, fund research, and forge partnerships—held accountable for outcomes. Boards of trustees must be strategic overseers, not micromanagers.
Regional and Global Collaboration
Bangladesh needs to strengthen collaborations with Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea for leadership fellowships and the exchange of faculty. South-South cooperation with India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka could also create regional leadership development networks. However, as long as UGC continues to block MOUs and delay approvals, these collaborations will remain on paper only.
Conclusion: Strong Leaders, Strong Universities
The evidence is glaring. The Bangladeshi private universities are not failing through lack of vision, imagination, or talent. They are failing because their leaders are not being given the autonomy to lead. The functions of strategy and vision have been outsourced to ceremonial roles, leaving UGC micromanaging forces to direct vice-chancellors, deans, and department heads to focus on chasing approvals rather than building futures.
As one exasperated vice-chancellor could perhaps have put it with such telling force:
“Give us responsibility for results but give us room. Without trust and freedom, we are guardians of paper, not builders of institutions.”
This is the crux of the crisis. Leadership has lost relevance. Faculty are frustrated, students are deprived, and ambitious partnerships collapse under the bureaucracy of UGC. Instead of enabling growth, the regulatory model is turned into a strait-jacket—blocking innovation, damping reforms, and suffocating initiative.
Experience internationally leaves no doubt: great universities are built by great leaders, and great leaders need space to lead. Singapore’s autonomous university boards, Malaysia’s AKEPT Higher Education Leadership Academy, and South Korea’s reforms all show what is possible when leadership is trained, empowered, and trusted. Those nations did not compromise quality by giving universities autonomy—instead, they strengthened it, ensuring that institutions were both globally competitive and nationally responsive.
Bangladesh must now decide whether to proceed along the line of bureaucratic inertia or embrace a model of growth governance. The solution is not to rework UGC at its peripheries. The solution is to establish an independent Higher Education Commission solely dedicated to private universities.
It would:
Empowering leadership by providing universities autonomy to shape curricula, research, and global connections, and making them accountable for quantifiable outcomes.
Foster innovation by minimizing red tape and replacing rigid micromanaging with performance-based evaluation.
Develop leadership capacity through training programmes, fellowships, and international partnerships so that vice-chancellors and deans can function strategically.
Provide equity and excellence by recognizing that private universities, which educate more than half of the nation’s students, require governance structures attuned to their specific needs and abilities.
Without this commission, the private universities of Bangladesh might be trapped in a cycle of mediocrity for all eternity—not because of lack, but because of lack of autonomy. With it, they might be agents of national advancement, global competitiveness, and intellectual ferment.
The choice before Bangladesh is stark but simple: trust and have faith in private university leaders and empower them, or see private institutions wither away. At the same time, the rest of Asia passes by. The need is urgent, the risk high, and the path clear.
Bangladesh needs an autonomous Higher Education Commission for private universities—today, not tomorrow, not someday—but today—if it is to save, support, and unleash the potential of its private higher education industry.
If Bangladesh wants its private universities to be hubs of innovation, then it must re-imagine UGC’s function—from bureaucratic gatekeeper to facilitative partner. If not, universities will remain at a disadvantage, while the rest of Asia waits to pass them by.
Source:
https://southasiajournal.net/empowering-leaders-building-institutions-why-bangladesh-needs-to-establish-an-independent-higher-education-commission-for-private-universities-in-bd/
