Higher education

However, when he goes on to propose that private universities are superior in one respect: They help the students move into the future job market, my response is less enthusiastic. Is preparation for a job the sole purpose of education?

There is a defined gap between education, which encourages the exploration of ideas and urges critical thinking, and training, which merely equips people with the skills needed to hold down a job. Education is acquiring the creative vision to see why the world needs to be changed and how this can be catalysed. Training is much more limited. It is merely acquiring a trade licence or a driver's licence. Education teaches questioning of one's inherited mind set and world. Training prepares the student to fit into an assembly line and the assumptions that go into its construction.

Given the injustices and inequities that go into the creation of the global assembly line, it is important to pause and ask if private universities in Bangladesh have got it right after all. If the present crop of graduates and future graduates of private universities (mostly business and IT majors) was all that we had, could we have stood up to protest and fight for liberation in 1971? Would we have?