Knowledge Based Area Development – A Step Towards Community Self-Reliance

IUBAT practices a seed-model of KBAD providing repayable loans to students enabling them to break out of poverty trap which if extended in wider scale in any society, could lead to community self reliance.

M Alimullah Miyan
Vice-Chancellor & Founder,
IUBAT – International University of Business Agriculture and Technology
4 Embankment Drive Road, Sector 10, Uttara Model Town, Dhaka 1230, Bangladesh
[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Higher education is the engine of growth for any nation. This imparts necessary knowledge and skills to the people enabling them to contribute towards national development. Higher education is more critical to the developing countries. Higher education can also be a means of social mobility. This will be possible when education is market driven, effective, dynamic and accessible by all. Funding is central in both capacity building and facilitation of access to higher education. The conventional mode of public funding suffers from some inherent limitations in quality and quantity. Private funding tends to be expensive and inaccessible to the poor. The middle ground is a quasi-public funding with participation of the stakeholders.

Alternative funding to facilitate accessibility can be arranged through Knowledge Based Area Development (KBAD). Students can avail loans refundable after gainful employment. KBAD can be made sustainable through initial funding by the state, donor agencies, community and civil society. Community participation would impose a sense of responsibility to repay the loans which in turn would create pressure to make higher education relevant and marketable. Loans can enable people from every segment of the community to avail higher education.

Bangladesh made attempts to ensure quality and increased accessibility by establishing non-government universities as of 1992. Yet finance hinders accessibility by the poor. IUBAT practices a seed-model of KBAD providing repayable loans to students enabling them to break out of poverty trap which if extended in wider scale in any society, could lead to community self reliance.

Published: 07 Nov 2006

Contact details:

4 Embankment Drive Road, Sector 10, Uttara Model Town, Dhaka 1230, Bangladesh

892 3471, 896 3523-27, 0174 014933
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Proceedings of International Education Meet’06