Imran was a visitor to the EBL 6TH EDIM EXPO 2006 now being held at the Expo Centre on level 7 of Bashundhara City, with the purpose of helping students to work towards their careers by enrolling into study programmes relevant to their backgrounds and change tracks, if necessary.

"I prefer local private universities of good repute as they are free of session jams. But if opportunity and finances favour, I will try to enrol myself in a college overseas where tuition fees aren't very high and cost of living is reasonable," he said.

"The expo is both about education and career prospects. But 'career' does not mean job opportunities, it just means counselling students towards finding the right 'career'," said Saifuzzaman Raihan, manager projects, Conference & Exhibition Management Services Ltd (CEMS), the firm managing the event.

"We emphasise on having a sound education background to help pick the right job according to one's educational qualifications and also assist those who are looking forward to change tracks," he said.

Raihan explained that if one is at present working in a bank and wants to change to human relations (HR), then we counsel him on what area of HR he should concentrate on, taking into account his educational background and age. "This is what we call counselling," he said.

"We also deal with the changing education atmosphere. In those days students who had just a degree were employed by good companies, but now even those possessing Masters in Business Administration (MBA) are unemployed," Raihan said, adding that career planning has now become more complicated.

Among the participants are private colleges and universities, IT institutions, education counselling firms, and fashion and hotel management schools.

"I am in Bangladesh for three and a half weeks and one reason is this expo," said Dr Terence R Moore, principal, Guildhall College, United Kingdom.

"We are very interested in getting students from Bangladesh through our representatives in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet and Khulna," he said.

"This is an opportunity for us to promote our college through our local representatives and also to see what representatives of other colleges and universities are offering," he added.

"We participated in this expo to promote the educational facilities our university offers. We are offering 50 percent discounts on spot admissions," said a representative of Eastern University.

"We also inform prospective students about our corporate links that help them to do their internships on completion of the theoretical part," he added.

The local agent of New Brunswick University, Canada is luring students with their promotion of Canada's educational environment, graduate and under graduate courses, low tuition fees, and job opportunities.

"We offer courses in managerial, technical, marketing and designing in the garments sector. This is the first time we are participating in an education expo in Dhaka," said Rajat Bhattacharyya, executive director, Pearl Fashion Institute, Bangladesh, an Indian institute affiliated with Nottingham Trend University.

"Our aims in this expo are building awareness as 74 percent of the export earnings of Bangladesh are from garments sector," he said.

"There are many private universities but none of them offer courses related to the garments industry and this is why Bangladesh has to hire people from abroad with high remuneration for jobs in this sector," he said.

Another new entrant to the race of schools is the Royal Park Institute of Hotel Management, Tourism and Catering, training and guiding new comers to the hotel trade.

"Hotel school is a new trend to Bangladesh and as we have now entered the race we needed exposure to this area of job oriented further education," said Saman Devasurendra, senior lecturer. "Students can study all aspects of the hotel trade from front office management to catering and house keeping under one roof," he added.

Seminars will be held on September 4 at 4 pm on "Role to be adopted by universities & counselling centres to upgrade and provide better services to the students" and "The problems of finance and foreign education".

Around 60 institutes in 90 stalls from 15 countries including Bangaldesh are participating in the fair.

Eastern Bank Ltd, while Channel I, partners CEMS, daily Jugantor and The Daily Star are media partners. The fair that began last Thursday will end on September 5. No public universities are taking part in this expo.