The University of Dhaka (DU) observes its 105th anniversary on July 1, 2026. The celebrations are anchored to a deeply resonant theme: “Restoration of Democracy and Dhaka University in Higher Education.” As the country reflects on the historic birth of an essential intellectual outpost in the region, this major milestone offers a moment for profound, systemic introspection.
For over a century, DU’s identity has been inextricably intertwined with nation-building and political transformation: from leading the 1952 Language Movement and serving as a crucible for the 1971 Liberation War, to anchoring the anti-military democratic movements of the late 1980s and, most recently, driving the 2024 mass uprising.
Yet, as we celebrate DU’s birth anniversary, we also frequently find it in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. Only weeks ago, social media discourse was locked in an unfortunate debate about the true worth of DU: whether it has devolved into a “coaching centre,” a “sinking ship,” or both.
Worldwide, the conversation around the excellence of universities has fundamentally shifted in recent decades. While historic struggles remain noble chapters of our political legacy, they carry little weight in the unforgiving matrix of modern global league tables. In the competitive arenas that dictate global prestige and determine the actual market value of a higher education diploma, historical folklore is no longer sufficient as valid currency.
For the past two decades, universities worldwide have been judged against measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) by global benchmarking platforms. DU’s management also accepted this shift and stepped into the ranking arena, by first enlisting in the QS rankings in 2011, and then in Times Higher Education (THE) rankings in 2016. However, the latter entry has also served as a harsh reality check: in the THE World University Rankings, DU has consistently languished in the lower tiers, frequently falling to the 800-1000 or even 1000+ bands. When evaluated through the QS World University Rankings, DU officially entered the 2012 cycle, placing in the 601+ bracket globally. It slid to the 701-750 bracket between 2014 and 2017, falling further during 2019-2023. Recent years saw a breakthrough, with DU jumping into the global top 600 tier in the 2027 ranking cycle.
Global examples prove that dramatic academic turnarounds are entirely possible. Two decades ago, the National University of Singapore was ranked among the top 20 universities globally in the QS World University Rankings, but in the 2027 rankings, it secured the 10th place to maintain its position as the top-ranked university in Asia. In contrast, the University of Malaya (UM) in Malaysia sat well outside the global top 100, but through aggressive institutional reforms and data-driven talent targeting, UM broke into the global top 75 by the early 2020s. In the 2027 QS World University Rankings, UM rose from 58th to 56th in the world—the highest position ever achieved by a local institution, leading a cohort of five Malaysian universities inside the global top 200. Similar state-coordinated ascents have been recorded by century-old institutions across China. Leading institutions like Peking University (established in 1898) and Tsinghua University (established in 1911) now regularly sit in the top 20 globally, transforming rapidly into research powerhouses.
How do we trigger this type of academic turnaround for DU? The solution requires changing our orientation entirely and learning to leverage “brain circulation.” Here, my personal journey is informative, at least for two reasons.
First, I left DU two decades ago and ended my overseas academic career to return, not to participate in a political brawl but to contribute actively to our higher education renewal project. I joined DU as a full professor of economics. My transition from a tenured job in the UK to Malaysia years ago coincided with an initiative by Malaysia’s oldest public university, UM, which actively targeted foreign academics to accelerate the country’s rise in global rankings. This was made effortless by the Malaysian government’s “Resident Pass-Talent” (RP-T) scheme, an initiative explicitly engineered to attract and retain high-value global expertise.
Similarly, China’s renowned “Hundred Talents Program,” operated by premier state universities, draws in top-tier diaspora and foreign scholars by offering competitive salaries, relocation subsidies, and massive research lab start-up funds. This highly competitive programme prioritises applicants who have earned a degree from, or whose disciplines are ranked within, the global top 100 of authoritative lists like the QS World University Rankings.
Regrettably, Bangladesh in general and DU in particular lack a comparable institutional talent-acquisition framework to draw its global diaspora back home. This is an arena where the policymakers have much to learn from the successful models implemented by both Malaysia and China. Recent diplomatic visits to these nations by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman as well as existing initiatives such as “Bridge to Bangladesh” could serve as potential catalysts to replicate East Asian talent strategies at DU.
The second overlooked aspect for me is the elephant in the room. The popular debate on the value and potential of DU overlooks its truest, most valuable capital: an unparalleled, massive pool of raw student talent. We possess thousands of the brightest minds in the country at a scale that no private university could ever replicate or afford. For an established researcher, this latent human capital is the ultimate asset which, if strategically leveraged, can help awaken the “sleeping giant.”
For the “sinking ship” to sail again, the right policy push and reforms centred on students are required. High-ranked East Asian flagship public universities with similar talent pools have done exactly that: systematically leveraging their local student bodies to build robust, high-quality PhD programmes, creating a sustainable internal talent pipeline that feeds advanced human resources directly into local research and development (R&D) and industry. DU has a massive opportunity to gain ground here. Top-ranking institutions like Malaysia’s UM engineered their growth through a targeted PhD publication boom, driven by strict institutional graduation mandates and strategic financial incentives. By requiring candidates to publish one or two peer-reviewed articles in prestigious Scopus-indexed or Web of Science journals to graduate, they sparked a massive, systemic surge in overall institutional research output. Currently, DU’s PhD programmes remain heavily under-subscribed, even though our best graduates routinely go abroad for doctoral training—and rarely return—due to a severe domestic shortage of structured research positions to absorb them.
Reassuringly, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman has singled out DU’s unsatisfactory research track record as an area needing intervention. However, instead of merely diagnosing problems and engaging in administrative hand-wringing, it is time for concrete action. Isolated and uncoordinated individual talent acquisition will not be enough. An East Asian-style, talent-first renewal model borrowing from rising higher education stars like China and Malaysia could be piloted at DU. By creating institutional avenues that actively welcome diaspora academics and foreign scholars to visit, research, and teach, we can inspire many to join DU’s regeneration project. If successful, this framework can be scaled across all public universities in Bangladesh, ensuring that the “lost glory” of our higher education system becomes a tangible future reality.
Dr M Niaz Asadullah is professor of economics at Dhaka University and senior fellow at IDEAS in Malaysia.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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