Having left Bangladesh soon after high school, I've observed a perplexing dynamic among the country's graduates. From my perspective, there's a curious mismatch between ambition and capability. The average Bangladeshi graduate seems caught in a paradoxical space – too reluctant for blue-collar work, yet simultaneously ill-prepared for white-collar opportunities.
The textile engineering sector offers an interesting microcosm of this phenomenon. Many graduates in this field get recruited before even completing their studies. Paradoxically, most engineering students actively avoid the textile engineering specialization, despite being unable to find jobs in their chosen fields. This trend reflects a deeper societal issue: the upper-middle-class obsession with status signaling rather than genuine hard work and self-reliance.
Contrary to popular narratives about workforce disadvantages, the employment landscape tells a nuanced story. Female unemployment rates are comparable to or even lower than male rates across most educational groups, except at the tertiary level. From my family's experience, education often seems more about virtue signaling than practical skill development, a tendency that perhaps even more pronounced among women.
The proposed solution of promoting apprenticeships appears unlikely to create meaningful change. These programs fundamentally lack the status appeal that young graduates seek, making them an ineffective intervention. In reality, this is less a systemic problem and more a consequence of upper-middle-class families indulging their children's aspirations, effectively allowing them to waste their twenties - this is not a policy problem, it's a cultural one.
Media narratives frequently suggest that economic growth in the 2010s exclusively benefited elites. However, the unemployment data reveals a different picture – our growth actually generated numerous blue-collar jobs, representing a more bottom-up economic effect. Yet, the pool of unemployed graduates remains a potential breeding ground for radical ideological movements.
One potential governmental approach could be mandating real internships as a graduation requirement. By making status harder to obtain, we might naturally reduce the demand for meaningless educational pursuits. However, the practical implementation of such a policy seems fraught with challenges, and clever individuals would likely find numerous loopholes to circumvent such restrictions.
Having left Bangladesh soon after high school, I've observed a perplexing dynamic among the country's graduates. From my perspective, there's a curious mismatch between ambition and capability. The average Bangladeshi graduate seems caught in a paradoxical space – too reluctant for blue-collar work, yet simultaneously ill-prepared for white-collar opportunities.
The textile engineering sector offers an interesting microcosm of this phenomenon. Many graduates in this field get recruited before even completing their studies. Paradoxically, most engineering students actively avoid the textile engineering specialization, despite being unable to find jobs in their chosen fields. This trend reflects a deeper societal issue: the upper-middle-class obsession with status signaling rather than genuine hard work and self-reliance.
Contrary to popular narratives about workforce disadvantages, the employment landscape tells a nuanced story. Female unemployment rates are comparable to or even lower than male rates across most educational groups, except at the tertiary level. From my family's experience, education often seems more about virtue signaling than practical skill development, a tendency that perhaps even more pronounced among women.
The proposed solution of promoting apprenticeships appears unlikely to create meaningful change. These programs fundamentally lack the status appeal that young graduates seek, making them an ineffective intervention. In reality, this is less a systemic problem and more a consequence of upper-middle-class families indulging their children's aspirations, effectively allowing them to waste their twenties - this is not a policy problem, it's a cultural one.
Media narratives frequently suggest that economic growth in the 2010s exclusively benefited elites. However, the unemployment data reveals a different picture – our growth actually generated numerous blue-collar jobs, representing a more bottom-up economic effect. Yet, the pool of unemployed graduates remains a potential breeding ground for radical ideological movements.
One potential governmental approach could be mandating real internships as a graduation requirement. By making status harder to obtain, we might naturally reduce the demand for meaningless educational pursuits. However, the practical implementation of such a policy seems fraught with challenges, and clever individuals would likely find numerous loopholes to circumvent such restrictions.