Professor Osama Khan is the first Bangladeshi to be appointed as a vice-chancellor and chief executive at a public university in the United Kingdom. He will take up his role as vice-chancellor of the University of South Wales in May next year. A former graduate of Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), he currently serves as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at Aston University, UK. Previously, he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Surrey. Professor Khan completed his higher education at Cambridge, Lancaster, and Surrey, and for over two decades he has held senior academic and executive positions at leading UK universities. He shared his experience in a recent interview with Bonik Barta. The interview was conducted by Shafiqul Islam.

You are a Bangladeshi graduate of a private university who has been appointed as a university chief executive or vice-chancellor in the UK for the first time. What was your childhood dream? What did you want to become?

As a child, I wanted to be a pilot. As far as I can remember, I was about five years old. I had trouble seeing what was written on the blackboard in class. My parents realised something was wrong with my eyesight. After seeing a doctor, it turned out I had power issues in both eyes. My father was an army officer. He sat me down and explained gently, “Osama, it’s not really possible for you to become a pilot.” I was deeply upset by that.

When I joined cadet college, on the first day in class the teacher asked everyone their name, address, and what they wanted to become when they grew up. I still remember it clearly. I stood up and said I wanted to be a university teacher. I was 12 at the time. From then on, my dream was to teach at a university, and specifically in economics.

Later, I sat the entrance exam for IBA at the University of Dhaka (DU). Only two batches had been admitted before and I was in the third. I passed the written exam, but was unlucky enough to be dropped at the viva. I could not study BBA. I then felt that economics was what I was meant to study anyway. I got admitted to economics at DU and attended classes for about ten days.

There was a short gap before enrolling at DU’s economics department. During that time, a neighbour aunty told me about a university called Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), which offered free education to students who had stood first in SSC and HSC boards. I received a full scholarship and started classes at IUB even before classes began at DU. My mother cried at the time, asking whether this could really be called a university. Many people told my father that his son was studying at some strange university.

I was young, but I was firm. I said I would not study at DU. I did not like the environment there at that time. I had come out of cadet college. I fell in love with IUB’s disciplined environment. To be honest, it was a major decision in my life.

You were surely selected for the vice-chancellor’s post after a long and rigorous selection process. How are vice-chancellors appointed in the UK? How would you compare it with Bangladesh?

In the UK, the process of appointing a vice-chancellor is among the toughest and most competitive. There are headhunting companies whose sole job is to identify the most suitable candidate for a university post from the global talent pool. The role is advertised globally. They also proactively knock on doors across the world, in the United States, Canada, or Europe. In the same way, the company approached me and said I had potential and asked whether I was interested in applying.

From application to final interview, I went through 29 interviews. Some of these were quite unusual. In one, I had to give a five-minute interview to a BBC journalist. That was a test. Another was to prepare a presentation on what university financing and the education system would look like over the next five years. I had to present it before 19 people. They were not only from the university. They included university council members, leading Welsh business figures, and representatives from the Welsh regulator, similar to the UGC. They questioned me for 90 minutes on my presentation.

After the presentation, I had to spend time with students. Around 15 students questioned me for 90 minutes on a wide range of issues. They asked how their lives would be shaped, what food facilities would be like, what kind of gymnasium there would be, and what my thinking was about international students. There was hardly any question the students did not ask. I had to answer them all.

British universities have a council, also called a board. The chair of the board is a non-executive. They are not a salaried employee of the university. They might be a major business leader, a prominent social activist, or someone with extensive experience running large organisations. Such a person is appointed to the role. They are effectively the vice-chancellor’s boss.

At the university, my reporting line is to the deputy chair of the board of governors and independent governor, Richard. He has spoken to me several times. He asked about my education policy, my thinking on research, how I plan to approach financing, my ideas on graduate employment, and my development plan. I had to speak separately with every executive member and dean. Even what I will need to learn after being appointed as vice-chancellor has already been documented, outlining what I must learn once I take up the role.

Every university has written governance rules that specify how the appointment process will be completed. This involves the senate, council members, academics, professional services staff, students, and stakeholders at different stages. The appointment is carried out independently. The government has no role. No one here cares whether I support the Conservative Party or the Labour Party.

Bangladesh’s biggest problem is that governance there is either not properly written down, or even if it exists, it is not followed. There is also severe government influence, which I have seen in both the private and public sectors.

There are examples of leading private universities in Bangladesh appointing foreign academics as vice-chancellors, pro-vice-chancellors, or registrars. Amid this, a Bangladeshi graduate has been appointed to a top post at a well-known university in a developed country. How do you see this?

Personally, I see the global movement of talent in higher education as a positive thing. The responsibility of an educational institution is to bring together the most talented people, whether they are teachers, students, or vice-chancellors. The idea is to create an environment where talented people can learn from one another. Having global mobility is a positive development, and Bangladesh also benefits from it.

At the same time, when Bangladeshis go abroad and work as academics at foreign universities, as I do, they also have things to learn from there. I am Bangladeshi after all. The moment you walk into my office, you will understand that I am Bangladeshi and that I am Muslim. This identity is a source of immense pride for me, and I do not hide it.

My current reporting boss, the vice-chancellor, is Serbian by origin but grew up in Australia. The combination of Serbian culture and Australian experience that he brings is something you would not get from a British academic. Bringing together people with different cultures and ways of thinking in one place is what globalisation is about, and it is hugely important for humanity. I view this very positively.

This does not mean there is no talent in the country, or that talent is simply leaving. I do not think that way of thinking is correct. In fact, I would say that thinking like that is somewhat communal.

You completed your primary and higher education in Bangladesh before reaching a top position at a mainstream UK university. What challenges did you face along the way?

The biggest challenge Bangladesh created for me was aspiration, the ability to dream, the desire to become something big in life. In a country with so many people, so many problems, poverty, and political corruption, we somehow forget how to dream. I do not think my education system stood in my way. I am deeply grateful to Cumilla Cadet College.

What I do every day as a senior university administrator comes straight from my days at the cadet college. For example, I wake up at 4:30 every morning. That habit started at cadet college when I was 12, and even now, at 50, it has not left me. I never felt that the education I received at cadet college or at IUB created any barrier to competing on a global platform.

My biggest disadvantage was not being able to dream. The confidence and inspiration to believe that I could become a professor or a vice-chancellor, that I could stand shoulder to shoulder with thousands of talented people from different countries at international universities, did not come naturally. I had to work hard on these things.

I could not find people like myself to look at and say, if they can do it, so can I. Professor Amit Chakma was the first Bangladeshi to become a vice-chancellor at an international university. He did so in Canada. I am the first in Europe and the UK. But if you look at the entire world, the first Bangladeshi vice-chancellor outside the country was Professor Amit Chakma. I have been following him since 2009. Where he goes, what he does, what he says at conferences, I have watched closely. I thought to myself, if this Bangladeshi can do it, why can’t I? But my example is just one. If you look at India, you will see hundreds of such examples.

When we see people like ourselves dreaming big and reaching big places, it inspires us. When I studied at a UK university, two of my teachers were Nobel laureates. For British students, dreaming is not a challenge. Our biggest obstacle is our inability to dream. That is the greatest challenge.

As an academic and administrator, how do you assess the state of higher education in the country, particularly the curriculum, teaching, examinations, and assessment methods? What is the main crisis in our country’s education system?

One of the biggest problems in Bangladesh’s education system is that rote learning is still promoted. Rote learning means memorising and sitting exams. The curriculum is not skills-based. The entire system depends on memorisation. Quality is judged through exams, but there is no real assessment of what students have actually learned or failed to learn. In my view, this is an outdated curriculum.

Student assessment should not revolve heavily around final exams. There should be continuous feedback. There should be project-based or teamwork-based, reflective assignments. In those assignments, students should come together to solve a social, economic, or technological problem. Through those solutions, we assess whether someone is becoming a good engineer, a good architect, or a good doctor.

The curriculum needs to be skills-based, designed in a way that allows students to think about ethics and society. What is my responsibility as a citizen, towards my family, my community, or my country? At my university, we have made four subjects compulsory: Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation, Entrepreneurship, Creative Leadership, and Environmental Sustainability. No matter what subject a student studies, they must take these courses.

What do you see as the main differences between universities in Bangladesh and the UK? Why are we lagging behind?

One major issue is that Bangladesh’s curriculum is still very content-focused. When a curriculum is reviewed or its quality is assessed, the focus is on how much content it contains. Quantity and volume of content are treated as measures of quality. But that is not quality education.

The real weaknesses lie elsewhere. How teaching happens in the classroom, what kind of projects should be assigned, and how industry skills are integrated into the curriculum. Another critical issue is soft skills. Can I interact with people? Can I work in a team? Am I a good citizen? The biggest purpose of education is to become a good human being. Bangladesh’s curriculum does not give much thought to this. We talk so much about corruption in Bangladesh, but we do not teach these issues in the classroom.

Humanistic education, skills-based education, and education that shapes good human beings must be part of the curriculum. Collaboration between academia and industry is not seen in Bangladesh. Classrooms are still directive. Bangladesh is still behind when it comes to making teaching interactive and problem-solving oriented in ways that are useful in professional life.

How do you view the quality and importance of research in higher education in Bangladesh, and how can it be improved?

A major dimension of research is academic freedom. Here, our teachers conduct research without discrimination. We never ask why someone is doing research or what immediate use it will have. Stephen Hawking discovered black holes. What immediate benefit does that bring to humanity? People working in physics, pure chemistry, or fine arts may appear to be doing work with no obvious outcome. If we think that way, research cannot progress. Everyone must have the freedom to pursue what they want to understand, because it contributes to the growth of human knowledge. Building that culture is crucial for research.

Other major issues are resources, infrastructure, and budget. Well-stocked libraries, properly equipped laboratories, PhD students, and training facilities for new researchers are essential. In Bangladesh, unfortunately, when you walk into some labs, it feels like stepping back into the 1980s.

BUET has some of the brightest students in the country. Sadly, when I visited its laboratories ten years ago, my heart sank. There was dust everywhere. The equipment looked unused, as if no one had touched it for years. Much of it was so old that learning on it no longer made sense. Teaching with outdated equipment does not develop any real skills.

Research is more expensive than curriculum development. There must be government-level funding. In the UK, a fixed percentage of the national budget is allocated to research. Research funding is not distributed based on political affiliation. It is awarded through qualitative competition. In Bangladesh, too much emphasis is placed on the number of publications. What matters is whether my research improves someone’s life.

What is your message for Bangladeshi youth?

Young people should never fall into inferiority or excessive self-satisfaction about their country of birth. They must dream big so they can do big things. They must be self-critical. Steve Jobs once said in a convocation speech, “Stay hungry, stay foolish!” There should be that kind of audacity to say that as a Bangladeshi, I will be the first person to become the world’s greatest artist, whose paintings hang in major galleries.

Being born in a third-world country does not mean there are no options. That mindset must be rejected. Thoughts and dreams must be big. Young people must realise that their competition is not only with London, Toronto, Sydney, or Tokyo, but with the entire world. Through knowledge, skills, language, technology, and character, they must establish their place in that competition.