Can academia fulfill national aspirations?

I stress the word constituency because these institutions are part of a larger society comprised of various groups with a variety of unfulfilled needs. It is these constituencies with which academia must interact constantly, solve their problems, and weave a knowledge base that is useful in ensuring a vibrant society. Especially, the universities must realise that they are not stand-alone entities, confined to some walls and idiosyncratic rigidities. Nor are they designed merely to "manufacture" graduates on a mass scale, often based upon context-less and, hence, ineffective education. To come alive as centres of excellence and to provide intellectual leadership, they must reach into and become one with the greater society, studying its every nuance and heartbeat to provoke, energize, guide, and build it. In the process, by assimilating the continuous stream of knowledge unearthed, universities can become the fundamental agents of social progress and reform. That means academia must engage fully with the society in which it is embedded to cast a critical eye on its deficiencies and to lend support towards its accomplishments. Such engagement demands that knowledge generation or research becomes as important, if not more important, than knowledge dissemination or teaching.

Unfortunately, the knowledge generation function in the country's intellectual centres remains an enigma, its essence and importance seemingly lost to the academic world, while its counterpart -- teaching -- stands on the crutches of borrowed knowledge, generated in distant lands and under circumstances that often have little or no bearing with ours. The ability of such context-deficient borrowed knowledge to prepare future nation builders, "fit" for the local environment, is assuredly diminished if not, in many instances, useless.

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In essence, the problem is this: we have a huge need for knowledge consumption while there is a shortfall -- more like a crisis -- in the amount and quality of knowledge production in the country. That can mean only one thing: We are importing or borrowing knowledge from elsewhere. Can such borrowed knowledge sustain, guide, and revitalise our society? The answer is an emphatic no! Just look at the society we have built…of greed, violence, deprivation, mistrust, disrespect, arrogance, and many other associated ills.

My contention that we are in a knowledge-deficient society is easy to substantiate: A visit to academia will reveal more often than not how few are the academics involved with meaningful, long term research (applied or basic); the knowledge archives to which academia contributes in the form of books, journals, conference proceedings, etc. often do not reflect materials of international stature and would not stand the test of peer reviews; state-of-the-art practice is often absent in the limited scale of research where lack of quantitative model building approaches fail to provide deeper insight; and a visit to the libraries will indicate how few are the products of local scholars adorning the shelves. Unless academicians pursue the intricate but meaningful and useful art of knowledge generation that is rigorous, relevant, and visionary, we will remain a knowledge-deprived society rooted in borrowed knowledge that is neither wholly relevant nor based on the particular circumstances of Bangladesh society.

Furthermore, there is evidence that knowledge generation is not a priority item in academia and is revealed in the following: Where available, especially in the universities, the research budgets are deplorable; funds to support travel to conferences, even within the country, are nearly non-existent or disproportionately allocated as government officials seem to gobble up a lion's share of such travel (funded by the international agencies) often with no accrual of benefits; and the number of symposia, seminars, and conferences organised in the country, given the number of higher education institutions that have proliferated in recent years, is decidedly inadequate and often seem purposeless since they are organised more as random events instead of reflecting a sense of continuity and focus. Even the lack of in-house informal exchange of scholarly views is depressingly lacking as faculty find little time for intellectual discourse.

To add to it, much of academia follows the pattern of regular offices, confining intellectual activity to something like a 9-2 schedule. Such a time frame, if fully utilised, could lead to some productive output, despite the teaching loads. However, most intellectual centres seem "not" to want to take advantage of even such limited hours; their activities are in fact much less intense. One might observe that on most days, after mid-day, many of the intellectual centres are transformed into desolate zones with locked offices and bleak corridors. This, I believe, is symptomatic of a corrosive problem: the inability or unwillingness of those in academia to be creative and competitive, and to pursue meaningful and long-term veins of research. Consequently, we should not expect academia to vie for prestigious international awards such as the Nobel to win laurels for self and country.

In an era when we are talking about knowledge economies or the knowledge revolution that has propelled many countries including our large neighbour to make immense gains both within and outside the country, the lack of attention to and interest in research and, consequently, indigenous knowledge generation in Bangladesh portends far-reaching adverse consequences. This is particularly serious for the social sciences that rely on borrowed knowledge. Applying such knowledge to our circumstances without any attempt to test and replicate their appropriateness can be disastrous. In fact, at the initiation of a research forum called the Research Adda, a prominent academician deplored the quality of research produced in many of the institutions of higher learning today: in his view, much of the research could at best be billed as "pseudo research."

What is imperative at this juncture for academia, if it wants to provide intellectual leadership to this nation, is to re-evaluate its role in society within the overall scheme of the knowledge needs of this country, formulate a clear vision, and bring knowledge generation to the forefront as an integral requirement of its faculties. Especially for the social sciences, local knowledge generation is a sine qua non for appropriate, meaningful, and context-based wisdom to take root.

Relying on foreign generated knowledge will not do in many areas as there's likely to be a misalignment of agendas and contexts. Unless the quality and quantity of research conducted in our higher education institutions is substantially increased, Bangladesh will be ever reliant on borrowed knowledge and foreign ideas that can lead the nation down paths it ought to carefully consider. For example, it is well-known how often the agenda of this nation is driven by external coalitions that often see the problems of this nation through their training and lenses.

While the guidance they offer may be well-intentioned, reliance on external ideas must be properly debated by academia. Today that careful and questioning scrutiny is left to the hands of a tiny group of "intellectuals" instead of being shared more widely across academia as national policies continue to be driven by the "externals" based on their views and biases. The Poverty Reduction Strategy (commonly known as the IPRSP) is a case in point about which much of academia is blissfully unaware although its design and projected effects have much to be debated. Unfortunately academia seems to have been side-stepped on the issue and a strategy of such national significance is being driven hard on the backs of a government administration that is neither trained to debate its pros and cons, nor fully committed to or cognisant about the process of developing such vital strategy as they appear to be foundering sector by sector, without a clear understanding what to do and how to do it! I believe "wider academia" could make a big difference here by weighing in and charting out the poverty reduction strategy through a long term research agenda.

Pursuing such long term veins of research and building an indigenous knowledge base is the better way to ensure our self-reliance and a course of development that is appropriate to our needs. Unless the role of knowledge generation and its continuous pursuit is imbued by academia, this nation will remain dependent on borrowed ideas and borrowed knowledge, mostly provided by those whose understanding of our context and culture can never equal that of a home-grown intelligentsia. Programmatic research must begin in right earnest in all of academia if a healthy and secure future is to be carved out with locally relevant knowledge. I might end by saying that my view of academia is not to cast all into one bag. There are pockets of good research that ought to be acknowledged; but as a whole, academia must generate much greater levels and quality of knowledge to build and sustain a vibrant social order.

Dr. Syed Saad Andaleeb is Professor and Programme Chair of Marketing, Sam and Irene Black School of Business, Pennsylvania State University, and Editor, Journal of Bangladesh Studies.