Yunus urges South Asian academics to align education with youth aspirations

Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus today called upon the academics to align the education system with the youths’ expectations and aspirations and stressed the revival of the SAARC to enhance regional academic cooperation.

“Today, I feel very excited that academics at the highest level could get together in Dhaka. It's important that this is Dhaka. I hope you will have a chance to review the things that have happened in Dhaka in the past few months,” he said, referring to post-2024 July Uprising events in Bangladesh.

The chief adviser made the remarks while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the three-day “South Asian Regional Conference on State of Higher Education and Future Pathway (SARCHE 2026)” at a hotel in Dhaka.
A total of 30 international representatives, including delegates from the United Kingdom, the Maldives, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as representatives from the World Bank, are participating in the event.

The conference is being organised under the Bangladesh government and World Bank-funded Higher Education Acceleration and Transformation (HEAT) Project of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of Bangladesh.

Prof Yunus said review of those events will clarify what university education and education as a whole are really about, adding that this should be the core subject of discussion at the gathering.

Highlighting the role of students in the 2024 uprising, he said, “Who are these young people that we are dealing with? They have their own mind. They stood up and raised their voices and brought down the ugliest fascist regime you could ever think of...”

"It would be a missed opportunity if you don't spend some time on understanding what they did a few months back in this very city. What was their expectation? What was their aspiration? Why did they stand up in front of guns and give their lives, knowing it would happen?" the chief adviser said.

To reflect the students' motivation behind joining the uprising, he referred to school student Shaheed Shahriar Khan Anas's letter, which he wrote to his mother before embracing martyrdom, stating that it was his duty to take to the streets with his friends, who were subjected to state-sponsored crackdown.

Noting that the event was not a sudden outburst, Prof Yunus said it happened in Sri Lanka and in Nepal too, but it happened in a bigger way in Dhaka.
He thanked the World Bank for organizing the conference, saying, "This was our responsibility to organize, but we failed. The World Bank has to step into make it happen".

Organising such gatherings was part of the responsibility under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the chief adviser said, “SAARC as a word has been forgotten and that's a shame on us.”
 

"This was supposed to be the idea of SAARC that we get together and make exchanges and learn from each other," he said, noting his efforts since he has taken the responsibility as the Chief Adviser to revive the SAARC.
 

"I am repeatedly reminding that we must get back to SAARC. That's where our family belongs to. And I will not give up repeating that appeal to the governments of the region," Prof Yunus said.