Imagine you are a faculty member at the University of Dhaka with a genuine research question. You need fieldwork and data. You may also need laboratory access, specialist equipment, or the ability to attend a conference where your peers can challenge your findings. You would want to produce something publishable, something that contributes to knowledge, and puts your institution on the map.

Now assume your annual research allocation is Tk 1 lakh. According to media reports, the University of Dhaka’s last budget allocated Tk 21.57 crore to research across more than 2,000 teachers—roughly Tk 1 lakh per researcher. This year’s university-level figures are not yet public, but the proposed national budget already shows a pattern: it consolidated Tk 200 crore of university research money into a single UGC fund. However, centralising the fund does not change how it will be divided; it just changes who holds the cheque book before the same old norms take over. That amount covers a field trip, a journal subscription, or a modest data exercise, not the sustained, collaborative research universities are meant to produce. Essentially, spreading research money equally across all faculty means treating the allocation like a salary supplement rather than an investment.

Approximately Tk 11.5 crore, just over half the budget, could fund ten structured overseas doctoral partnerships at roughly Tk 1.1 to Tk 1.2 crore each, covering three years of tuition and maintenance. The University of Dhaka, like many public universities in Bangladesh, often appoints lecturers before they have acquired a doctorate, with a study leave abroad taken later on. This is the population the funding stream would serve. But not through the conventional model of sending someone abroad and hoping they return.  Each publicly funded PhD scholar should remain connected to Bangladesh throughout their degree: attached to a home department, co-supervised by a Bangladeshi academic, publishing with Bangladeshi institutional affiliation, and returning for structured visits.

The remaining Tk 10 crore could fund something Bangladesh does not yet have: a competitive internal research grant programme built around a qualification that also does not yet exist here: the Master of Research (MRes).

The MRes is not a taught degree, and it is not an MPhil. It sits between a coursework masters and a doctorate, designed specifically to develop early-career researchers through a year of supervised original research. Students review the literature, write a research grant proposal, generate and analyse data to produce results, present their findings at a conference, and submit a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal. MRes students graduate with the skills, habits, and outputs of a working researcher.

Here is how the model could work in Bangladesh. PhD-holding faculty members would compete openly for internal research grants of between Tk 5 lakh and Tk 30 lakh, depending on the nature and cost of the project. Each faculty member may submit only one proposal per year. A selection body with external peer review would choose up to 75 projects from across the university. Each winning supervisor would then advertise their project and select an MRes students through open competition. Selected candidates would receive a full research studentship, maintenance support, and project costs covered. Administration and research training would run centrally, at the university or faculty level while supervision would happen in the home department.

In a single academic year, this model could generate up to 75 original research projects, 75 MRes graduates with real outputs, and 75 faculty members who have written, defended, and delivered a competitive grant proposal. Some graduates could move on to MPhil degrees and doctoral study; others will take up research roles in government and scientific institutions, where the MRes should be recognised as a marker of their research readiness. The numbers here focus on one university, and they are indicative rather than precise: a ballpark to illustrate the principle, not a finished budget.

This model can be applied to any public university in Bangladesh. The logic is the same everywhere: concentration and competition produce research; equal distribution of research allocation across thousands of faculty members produces very little. Bangladesh does not necessarily need to invest more in university research. It needs to spend what it already has as if research were meant to generate tangible outcomes. The UGC’s newly consolidated fund can be the first real test of whether that logic changes or simply moves to a single address.

Mo Hoque is senior lecturer in hydrogeology and environmental geoscience at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He can be reached at [email protected].
Ashraf Dewan is director of research at the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, Australia. He can be reached at [email protected].

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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