Educating the future workforce

IUBAT nursing students with visiting faculty volunteers

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt writes, “In the foreseeable future, many poorer countries will have to contend with the needs of an aged society even though their workers are far less productive than those in wealthier countries. Consider Bangladesh: a poor country today that will be an elderly society tomorrow, with over 13 percent of its 2050 population projected to be seniors. The backbone of the Bangladeshi labor force in 2050 will be today’s youth. But standardized tests show that five in six members of this group fail to meet even the very lowest international skill standards deemed necessary for participation in a modern economy: the overwhelming majority of this rising cohort cannot ‘read and answer basic questions’ or ‘add, subtract, and round whole numbers and decimals.’”

We have written frequently about BHP efforts to tackle this problem, including our delivery of free pre-school and primary education in a rural village; advocacy for meaningful, national-level student assessments, and BHP Director John Richards’ book on education in South Asia. As a tiny organization, however, BHP has only limited impact. We are hopeful that the education reform group now making recommendations to the interim government in Bangladesh will be able to achieve more substantial change.