Institutional Challenges and Strategic Pathways of Bangladesh University of Professionals to Academic Excellence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/jtel.v4i2.7437Keywords:
Bangladesh University Professionals, Civil-Military Relations Education, Higher Education Governance, Institutional Leadership, Research ProductivityAbstract
Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP) represents a distinctive model of higher education governance in Bangladesh, where administration is largely guided by the Armed Forces (AF) personnel. While this model has ensured discipline, stability, and an apolitical campus environment, its long-term implications for sustaining academic excellence remain insufficiently examined. This study aims to explore the institutional challenges faced by BUP and to identify strategic pathways for sustaining and enhancing its academic performance. Adopting a qualitative research design, the study draws on key informant interviews, focus group discussions and an extensive review of secondary sources, institutional documents, policies and relevant literature. The findings reveal that military-led governance contributes to administrative efficiency and order, but frequent changes in leadership limit academic participation in governance. In addition, the fragmented research outputs and regulatory complexities with affiliated institutions hinder academic excellence and continuity. The study recommends longer tenures for key leadership roles, stronger academic-administrative integration, consolidation of research including outputs of affiliates under a unified institutional banner, enhanced civil-military cooperation and cohesion. It emphasized on maintaining existing apolitical status, discipline, and dress codes, ease up the posting of the AF officers to BUP. Moreover, it recommends to periodically review and implement the existing academic strategic plan vis-à-vis pathways to have a multi-entity academic environment, including an active and output-based research center, with steps to galvanise efforts of alumni with some related issues. The novelty of this study lies in its focused institutional analysis of a military-administered public university in Bangladesh, offering empirically grounded insights that extend existing debates on higher education governance beyond human resource development narratives.
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