From Bureaucracy to Breakthroughs: Why Private University Research Needs Its Own Higher Education Commission
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From Red Tape to Research Triumphs: A visual journey from the burdens of bureaucracy to the brilliance of independent innovation, highlighting the urgent need for a dedicated Higher Education Commission for private universities
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The Untapped Engine of Academic Discovery
Research is not an elective add-on to a university’s mission—it is the bloodstream that feeds scholarship, the motor by which knowledge is produced, and the bridge that binds theory to applied transformation. Without an active research culture, universities are nothing more than pedagogical factories that produce students who can memorize but cannot generate knowledge.
Bangladesh’s private universities now admit over 60% of all tertiary students and employ thousands of extremely well-qualified scholars, many of whom hold their Ph.D. from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Malaysia, and Japan. They attract bright students, usually urban middle-class youth who desire a world-class education close to home. They could be centers of innovation, producing research that responds to national priorities—whether adaptation to climate change along the coastal belt or digitization of public services.
But this potential remains far from realized. A few private universities do carry out research, but their total contribution to Bangladesh’s research pool is limited compared to their size and potential. The issue is not a deficiency of skills, imagination, or motivation—but structural restrictions laid down by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
A vice-chancellor of one of Bangladesh’s leading private universities defined it succinctly:
“Our faculty know what they need to do, our students are passionate about it, and our partners are ready to partner. But every time we begin a research project, we spend more time completing UGC paperwork than actually conducting the research.”
Current Landscape: Research Potential Under Constraint
Private universities in Bangladesh emerged under the Private University Act of 1992 and its subsequent amendments. Even though the law allows them to operate independently in most respects, management of research is still channeled through the UGC, which was established in 1973 with the express mandate of regulating and financing public universities. This legacy has given rise to three basic constraints on research in the private sector.
Limited Access to Research Funding
The UGC channels the vast majority of research expenditure into public universities. Even when research proposal invitations are theoretically “open to all,” evaluation criteria often favor public universities on the grounds of their larger government-supported infrastructure, record of achievement, and established UGC connections.
One business dean at a private university said:
“When grant opportunities for national research are invited, we might as well not exist. We can submit proposals, but never approvals—no matter the quality of our research proposal.”
This disparity in funding forces private universities to draw from internal budgets for research purposes when tuition revenue is their primary income, and most of it goes into payrolls, buildings, and student services.
Bureaucratic Project Approval Processes
Even if universities in the private sector secure funding from foreign donors or corporate sponsors, the UGC’s project clearance is a bottleneck. Sensitive proposals, such as funding arrangements, research objectives, and human resource deployment, must be submitted by the university to initiate a project. Although regulation is necessary, it often takes months, if not more than a year.
One professor of environmental science recalled:
“We obtained a grant from an international NGO to research coastal erosion in southern Bangladesh. It was critical work—the erosion was blowing houses away every month. But UGC clearance lasted nine months, and by that time the funding cycle closed. The study never materialized.”
Barriers to Industry Partnerships
Globally, the most productive university research is undertaken in collaboration with private companies. Not only does this accelerate the process of technology transfer, but it also ensures that research is market oriented. In Bangladesh, though, UGC policy discourages or makes such an arrangement problematic for private universities but is liberal with public universities.
The director of a research institute at a university had to say:
“We were scheduled to begin a joint project with a multinational tech company to develop AI-driven flood forecasting models. Technology and data existed, but the project stalled because UGC wanted to ‘look over’ all aspects of the partnership agreement. After nearly a year of back-and-forth, the company switched to working with a regional university in India.”
Red Tape in Action: Stories from the Field
They are in the form of foregone opportunities and lost momentum. In the world of high-speed research, where funding windows and collaborative agreements often shut on short notice, timing is everything.
Consider a proposed renewable energy project in a Chattogram private engineering university. It was financed by a European Union climate fund, which wanted to develop low-cost solar desalination devices to serve coastal dwellers. The EU funding was conditional on starting the project within six months. All papers were handed over by the university to the UGC, but it took ten months to clear them. By the time the approval arrived, the EU had already switched the funds to a similar project in Vietnam.
Or take the case of a public health faculty team given funds by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study rural vaccine delivery systems. Quick field surveys had to be conducted for the project during a specific immunization campaign. Any time delay in UGC approvals would mean that the study could only start after the campaign was over, rendering the survey largely ineffective.
One such faculty member encapsulated the frustration in the following words:
“We were really having a post-mortem of a lost opportunity. Research is solving puzzles in the moment, not after the event.”
Why a Private HEC is the Solution
The chronic research limitations faced by private universities in Bangladesh are not the result of isolated inefficiencies—they are manifestations of a governance regime never constructed for the unique needs of private higher education. The University Grants Commission (UGC) operates through structures, schedules, and presumptions that benefit state-run universities at the expense of self-financed, market-responsive universities, due to their origins in managing and sponsoring public institutions.
The answer is to create a Higher Education Commission for Private Universities (HEC-PU) as a specialist, independent agency with the power to oversee research administration, funding distribution, and collaboration approvals for these institutions. By developing policies adapted to their models of operation, the HEC-PU could harness the sector’s whole scholarly potential.
Targeted Funding Pools
Nowadays, virtually all national research funding, whether from the UGC or government sources elsewhere, is awarded to public universities. Even when they are technically open to private universities, structural disadvantages exist. The scoring is biased towards institutions with government financing histories, established research centers, and long lists of publication histories—all characteristics naturally held by public universities due to history and government subsidies.
A dedicated pool of funds managed by HEC-PU would guarantee equity. If the commission sets aside particular grant categories for private universities, it can also ensure that the criterion for disbursing funds is research quality, instead of institution type.
The funding may be allocated across thematic areas of priority, such as climate change resilience, renewable energy, public health, agricultural technology, and artificial intelligence—sectors where private universities are likely to enjoy more autonomy in innovation.
A chair in engineering put it into perspective as follows:
“We do not want special treatment. We want fair treatment. Let us compete for grants in a system that actually looks at our proposals on their merit.”
This approach has international precedence. India’s AICTE has established funding streams for private institutions in emerging technologies, which have led to significant increases in research publications by the private sector in Scopus and Web of Science databases.
Competitive Research Awards
Finances are crucial, but so is recognition to develop a culture of research excellence. The HEC-PU can recommend yearly research excellence awards that recognize private university employees and research groups for high-impact journal articles, patented products, commercially essential innovations, and outstanding community-engaged research projects.
These awards would serve several purposes:
Incentive: Employees would have a tangible reason to work towards quality outputs.
Exposure: Successful projects could be showcased regionally and internationally, enhancing the institution’s profile.
Partnership: Supported projects have a higher chance of attracting more funds and partnerships, causing a multiplier effect.
For example, one Malaysian private university witnessed a 40% increase in patent applications within two years after the introduction of a parallel research award scheme by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) in the private sector.
In Bangladesh, such awards could be accompanied by cash grants or seed money for future projects, so that awards are converted into further research productivity.
Streamlined Approval Delays
The most urgently needed reform the HEC-PU can enact is streamlining approvals of research projects. Approval for collaborative or externally funded research with the UGC could take months—or over a year—because of hand-written paperwork, multiple tiers of approvals, and non-standardized review criteria.
A private HEC can substitute this with an electronic submission and tracking system, where universities upload proposals, partnership agreements, and funding documents to an online platform. Every submission will have a specified maximum turnaround time, with project scale-based categories:
Minor collaborative agreements: Two weeks’ approval.
Medium-scale projects with national partners: One-month approval.
Large-scale international grants: Two-month approval.
This isn’t a pipe dream. Singapore’s Ministry of Education has operated such a system for decades, ensuring that no competitive funding program falls victim to red tape.
The benefit of such a model is not necessarily speed—it’s predictability. Professors would be able to plan research activity with the confidence of knowing when they can get started, as opposed to working in uncertainty.
Facilitation of Industry Partnerships
University-industry collaborations are the impetus for applied research in the world. It translates academic discovery into practical products, services, and policy action. Private universities in Bangladesh are exceptionally well-placed to be leading the charge in this case—they generally have more effective links with business communities, more responsive administration processes, and professors who wish to solve industry problems.
But under the present UGC norms, most industry-sponsored projects languish as the approval process is slow and risk-averse. Firms, particularly foreign firms, are reluctant to invest money when legal documents can take a year to finalize.
HEC-PU can turn things around by:
Developing standard partnership agreements for addressing issues of intellectual property rights, confidentiality, and revenue-sharing to cut down negotiation time.
As a facilitator to connect private university research capacities and industry needs in fields like IT, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture.
Joint funding opportunities where industry stakeholders co-fund research with HEC-PU to ensure collaborative investment and shared interest in outcomes.
A faculty member in an applied sciences faculty summarized the need:
“Industry partners we have who are willing to partner with us today, not two years from now. If we can’t match what they’re doing, they’ll take their projects—and their investment—elsewhere.”
South Korea has formalized such facilitation roles in its Korea Research Foundation, which actively mediates and subsidizes joint projects among industry and universities with the resultant high level of patent commercialization.
Learning from Global Best Practices
The idea of having a separate Higher Education Commission for Private Universities in Bangladesh is not new. Governments across the globe have realized that private universities, as part of the entire higher education ecosystem, have different operational settings compared to public universities. They therefore require government models, finance arrangements, and research facilitators different from those needed by public universities. The Malaysian, Indian, and Philippine experiences are excellent case studies that Bangladesh can learn from and transform into valuable insights.
Malaysia: AKEPT and the Emergence of Private-Sector-Driven Innovation
Malaysia’s Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT) is a research facilitation and capacity-building center for the country’s national higher education system, with specific provisions for private universities. AKEPT offers specialized training programs for lecturers and administrators in research management, grant writing, and international collaboration. These are complemented by competitive research grants exclusively set aside for private universities, enabling them to conduct applied research responding to national development priorities.
The results have been astonishing. Over the past decade, Malaysia has seen a surge of start-ups and patents led by the private sector, some of which have been created from industry-led research in engineering, biotechnology, and renewable energy. Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), for instance, utilized AKEPT funds to establish a solar technology research laboratory that has since partnered with Southeast Asian energy companies. By incorporating private universities in the nation’s innovation plan, Malaysia has widened its R&D reach considerably without overloading public institutions.
India: AICTE’s Targeted Funding for Emerging Technologies
In India, the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) recognized that the country’s rapidly evolving technology landscape required more research agility than traditional funding models could deliver. AICTE responded to the need by creating a special funding window specifically for private technical universities and institutions with focus areas in high-potential next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, quantum computing, and renewable energy technologies.
This special channel has yielded fruit. Private institutions like Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) and Amity University have used AICTE funds to establish state-of-the-art research labs and publish extensively in Scopus-indexed and Web of Science journals. Private Indian university publications in the above databases have increased by over 35% in the past five years, with a majority of articles receiving citations in top-level journals. The policy has also helped India develop more robust global research collaborations, as most of these emerging technology initiatives have foreign collaborators and co-authored reports.
A similar approach can likewise drive private university engagement in the Philippines in sectors like fintech, renewable energy, and agritech—areas at the heart of the country’s long-term economic resilience.
Philippines: CHED’s Community-Engaged Research Model
The Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has spearheaded an initiative that links private university research grants to funding with local community involvement and problem-solving. Because private schools are often grounded in their local settings, CHED offers development research grants for initiatives specifically addressing local requirements—such as disaster risk reduction in typhoon-prone provinces and livelihood development in rural agriculture communities.
This framework has revolutionized the research landscape for Philippine private schools. Institutions that were formerly focused on teaching in classrooms are now strongly involved in addressing national and local development imperatives. For example, Ateneo de Davao University was helped by CHED in a study on fisheries management in Mindanao that included scientific investigation and training of local fisherfolk. The project not only enhanced marine conservation action but also boosted the income of participating communities, earning national and international recognition.
For Bangladesh, where regional disparities and climate vulnerabilities are acute, a CHED-type community involvement model may assist private universities in deriving research with clear social applicability and enhancing their academic credibility.
The Multiplier Effect of Eliminating Red Tape
Once private universities can conduct research free from over-bureaucratic hindrance, the benefits extend far beyond the institutions. Removing the chains of slow clearance, inflexible funding distribution, and industry collaboration barriers can be a shock wave across the entire higher education system, economy, and Bangladesh’s international academic standing.
Talent Retention
One of the most straightforward effects of removing research barriers would be retaining gifted researchers who would otherwise leave Bangladesh for better-funded and more autonomous environments. Academic brain drain is a well-documented condition for developing countries, and Bangladesh is no exception. Trained teachers, particularly those holding PhDs from reputable universities abroad, are drawn to employment in Malaysia, Singapore, or the Middle East, where they are provided with research grants, state-of-the-art research infrastructure, and fewer administrative delays.
By providing equal access to competitive grants, streamlining approval processes, and enabling faculty to submit proposals for collaborative projects without the paperwork, a Higher Education Commission for Private Universities (HEC-PU) would make research careers in Bangladesh far more appealing. This would halt the flight of intellectual capital and create a virtuous circle in which advanced researchers mentor young academics in their backyard.
Student Development
An effective research culture benefits students and faculty alike. As undergraduate and graduate students participate in active research projects, they develop the problem-solving, data analysis, and innovation capabilities desired by the global job market.
Private universities in countries like South Korea and Australia regularly place students into subsidized research projects, enabling them to co-author research papers, write presentations for international conferences, and develop prototypes or business plans that become successful ventures. This makes them more employable as well as motivates students to pursue higher degrees, which trickles back into the national research pipeline.
For Bangladesh, empowering private universities to engage in these opportunities may be what makes a significant difference in graduate competitiveness. Rather than being limited to learning in classrooms, students may participate in solutions to climate change, innovations in public health, or tech entrepreneurship even before graduation.
Innovation Ecosystem Growth
Applied research has been a proven driver of economic growth. When universities generate research that translates into patents, start-ups, and technology transfers, the effects resonate in industry, creating jobs, as well as in national GDP.
For example, the investment in research by private universities in Malaysia through targeted grants has facilitated the establishment of start-up incubators on campuses that have spawned renewable energy, agritech, and biomedical device companies. In India, AICTE-sponsored private universities have commercialized AI-based healthcare diagnostics innovation as well as low-cost water purification systems.
Private universities in Bangladesh, with autonomy and funding, can be the drivers of the national innovation strategy. Connecting academic research to the needs of industries, they can generate exportable technology, attract venture capital, and help establish a knowledge-based economy.
Global Visibility
High-quality, reliable research output directly affects global university rankings and reputation. Universities that output consistent Scopus or Web of Science-indexed journal articles, host international research collaboration and conferences, and involuntarily attract international students, visiting scholars, and global partnerships.
Today, only a handful of Bangladeshi private universities figure in the QS World University Rankings or the Times Higher Education Index—and those do so mainly by having spent big on research in defiance of systemic constraints. If fewer red tape and assured funding were present, several times more could attain that kind of visibility.
A senior faculty member in biotechnology explained a case:
If we had half the research independence of Malaysian universities, our productivity would double within five years—and a good number of them would be published in high-ranking journals.”
Higher visibility would not only bring greater institutional reputation but also place Bangladesh on the map as an emerging center for South Asian research, attracting international students and research funds.
Quality Concerns
It is not reasonable to believe that all private universities in Bangladesh are now equipped to conduct quality research equal to global standards. Naturally, critics should point out that some colleges lack the necessary infrastructure, faculty qualifications, or institutional environment to utilize competitive research grants optimally. In some cases, private universities have been more concerned with teaching and generating income than with labs, research libraries, or rigorous research training of students and teachers.
It is for this exact reason that capacity-building must be included as part of any research reform. Provision of funds alone without institutional readiness would not only be a waste of money but also undermine public trust in the Higher Education Commission for Private Universities (HEC-PU). The aim ought to be one of rewarding merit, preparedness, and continuity of efforts, and not just dispersal of funds willy-nilly.
A HEC-PU readiness survey can form the basis of this strategy. The survey would look at some key criteria such as:
Qualifications of the faculty – possession of research guides with requisite doctoral or postdoctoral qualifications and a proven record of scholarly output.
Research infrastructure – looking at whether institutions are well-equipped with laboratory facilities, specialist equipment, data analysis software, and collaborative working spaces.
Library and web-based facilities – verifying the availability of current academic journals, e-libraries, and databases such as JSTOR, Scopus, or Web of Science.
Ethical review processes – confirming the presence of functional Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) or Ethics Committees to oversee research on human subjects, the environment, or privacy concerns.
Universities meeting these benchmarks may qualify for full research funding, which they can then use to undertake significant projects with confidence. If not, they may be granted development grants—supported funding aimed at building missing capacity, whether by training staff, equipping laboratories, or setting up ethical review protocols. This not only promotes continuous improvement but also holds them accountable.
Similar models of readiness have been effective elsewhere. The Indian Department of Science & Technology, for example, operates a “Tiered Funding” scheme whereby it awards seed grants to less-resourced institutions and channels larger competitive grants to those with proven track records. In Malaysia, AKEPT aligns funding eligibility with an official mentoring scheme so that emerging universities can work alongside high performers before competing for large grants.
A dean of social sciences at a prominent private university in Dhaka summarized the sentiment well:
“We’re not asking for funds to be thrown at any institution. We’re asking for a system that rewards readiness, preparation, and proven capacity the current UGC process doesn’t measure well.”
By incorporating readiness testing into grant decisions, the HEC-PU might reach the optimal balance—ensuring that research funded by public and private institutions brings measurable returns and allowing nascent institutions to grow as research giants.
Conclusion: Research Without Red Tape is a Necessity, Not a Luxury
The stakes are clear. Suppose no system of governance involves private universities in timely, well-funded, and impactful research. In that case, Bangladesh will fall behind other neighboring countries when it comes to innovation, patents, and global academic impact.
As one pro-vice-chancellor put it:
“We tell our students to think critically, to innovate, and to move fast. But as an institution, we are stuck going at the speed of the slowest paper in the slowest government office. That has to change.”
A Higher Education Commission for Private Universities would not just cut red tape—it would unlock a whole sector’s potential, transforming private universities from unused hubs of teaching into vibrant research centers that drive Bangladesh’s future.
Source: https://southasiajournal.net/from-bureaucracy-to-breakthroughs-why-private-university-research-needs-its-own-higher-education-commission/