Zombie graduates driven by rickshaw faculty - a qualitative case study: Private universities in urban Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh's post-secondary education has become a hunting ground for local economic conglomerates and their transnational allies. Applying a holistic lens helps to understand the factors and short-term effects of blindly applying neo-liberal induced deregulation and privatization that constructed a mushrooming ''McDonaldization'' culture in the local postsecondary setting (Ball, 2003; Levin, 1998). The findings of a six-week-long study on Bangladeshi private universities, involving 32 interviews with students and faculty, civil society, and business community representatives and over 100 hours of ethnographic observation, contradict the ideal roles of universities in Bangladeshi society as they lead to demands that neither the universities nor the society can satisfy (Boulton and Lucas, 2011; Collini, 2012). These findings indicate this system constructs ''zombie graduates'' (Husain, forthcoming), who are entitlement happy yet lack critical understanding and suffer from acute 'philosophical poverty' (Husain, forthcoming). In addition, this paper highlights the psyche of upper-middle-class local students and how they reinforce a habitus for effective domination (Bourdieu, 1989, 1997). Finally, this paper critically analyses the imbalanced application of economics and philosophy in higher education governance and argues that the outcomes can hurt post-colonial Bangladeshi culture and society in the long run (Harvey, 2005; Sen, 2006). Critically, these impacts contribute to two arguments: White Men's Germ on Brown Men's Body (Husain, forthcoming) and Betrayal by the Intellectuals (Chatterjee, 2004; Orwell, 1949).