English Language and Higher Education in Bangladesh

For the last 50 years language has been treated as a very sensitive issue in our country. During the Pakistani period the Pakistani regime wanted to suppress the rights of Bengali people. Their main attention was focused on Bangla. After the independence this problem no longer existed. However, in the last few years we find that English is becoming the most dominating language in the realm of higher education. There are now more than 16 private universities in the country. In all of them, the medium of instruction is English. Even in the public universities a shift towards English has been taking place for sometime. For example those students who study BBA or Computer Science in different colleges and Institutes under National University have to study in English.


In the SSC and HSC level adequate importance is not given to English in the curriculum. As a result most of the students remain weak in this language. They find a lot of difficulties in higher education. It is known to us...