Background
It's monsoon season in Bangladesh. However, the student movement that led to the fall of the government earlier this month is being widely dubbed as the 'Bangladesh spring', a reminiscence of the 'Arab spring' a decade ago.
Initially, the students in Bangladesh were protesting against the unfairness of the government recruitment system - a rather trivial issue for a country with a population of 170 million.
There were widespread concerns that the system - where 30 per cent of the jobs were reserved for the families of the freedom fighters of the Bangladesh independence war of 1971 - was unfair, disproportionate, and allowed the ruling party to distribute favours among its party members.
As the protests - which began at the University of Dhaka and then spread to other university campuses across the country - increased, the government unsuccessfully attempted to use full force to suppress the students.
Eventually, as the student protests turned into a one-point demand for the resignation of the regime, people from all walks of lives started joining in. This forced the Prime Minister to flee the country on 5 August.
Student influence
After the government collapsed, the student leaders installed Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Laureate, as the country's interim leader. Students also played a very significant role in deciding the shape of his interim cabinet.
In fact, two of the student leaders from the University of Dhaka, both aged 26, have been inducted as the country's youngest ever advisors in the interim government - a position equivalent to a cabinet minister in the UK.
The interim government is expected to carry out widespread political, social and economic reform, and rebuild institutions - ensuring accountability, transparency and fairness. Therefore, clearly, the student movement had a significant social impact that could change the direction of travel for the country.
Framework for social impact
In recent times, we have seen universities across the world being ranked for their ability to tackle various environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Although environmental and governance issues are well defined, and easier to report, there is no agreed framework for measuring social impact - allowing organisations to come up with their own.
For instance, the QS World University Rankings on Sustainability uses a number of criteria against which the social impact of a university is measured:
- Equality (12%)
- Knowledge exchange (10%)
- Impact on education (7%)
- Employability and opportunities (11%)
- Health and wellbeing (5%).
Data is generated and submitted by universities themselves. However, other than equality, universities require significant resources to collect such data.
It is, therefore, rather unsurprising that of the top 50 universities in the QS World University Rankings on sustainability, only one (University of Cape Town, ranked 50) comes from a developing country.
Also, the criteria do not allow any 'lens weight' for universities such as the University of Dhaka (and perhaps many other universities in developing countries) for making exceptional social impact.
Influence of the University of Dhaka
Notably, students and teachers at the University of Dhaka have played significant roles in major social movements in the country, including:
- The language movement in 1952 - resulting in the introduction of the International Mother Language Day celebrated globally every February
- The independence movement of 1971
- The movement to restore democracy in 1990.
Yet, the university is currently ranked 637th in the QS rankings for sustainability.
Indeed, in Bangladesh's deeply politically divided society, leadership positions in all public universities, including the University of Dhaka, are filled in by academics who are either members, or strong sympathisers of the ruling party. They would hardly have any incentive to report data that would go directly against the government.
Re-thinking how to measure social impact
This raises some interesting questions regarding the fairness of the QS ranking system. Particularly, its failure to capture the wider yet very significant social impact of universities, perhaps due to the inability of some universities to commit resources and better articulate such contributions.
The 'Bangladesh spring' case therefore warrants a serious and innovative rethink of the manner in which the actual social impact of a university could be measured. Maybe the use of independent sources (for example, positive or negative media coverage) for the rankings would depict a more realistic picture.
