Cost and Benefit of Higher Education in Bangladesh

This book contains a study of cost and benefit of higher education in Bangladesh. By higher education is meant five years of study consisting of the four-year undergraduate Honours programme and the one-year Master’s programme at the public universities of Bangladesh. Higher education can have many benefits, but this study considers only financial benefits. In the analysis of cost and benefit of higher education, cost per student is estimated by adding private cost and recurring cost per student at the relevant university. The benefit per student, which is more difficult to estimate, is calculated by considering the sum of life time income minus what the student would have earned if he had no higher education, discounted by various rates of interest. The costs and benefits are then compared by applying three standard methods—the benefit-cost ratio (BCR), the net present value (NPV), and the internal rate of return (IRR). All three measures show that undertaking higher education is still worthwhile, but the difference between benefit and cost is getting narrowed down. The study discusses the implications of these results and makes some pertinent policy suggestions.