Title: The impact of misalignment amongst recruitment test, training and higher education on the marginalisation of graduates majoring in public administration in the public service of Bangladesh

Authors: Romana Kader; Gazi Mahabubul Alam; Nor Azni Abdul Aziz; Md. Mahfuzur Rahman; Karima Bashir

Addresses: Department of Foundations of Education, Faculty of Educational Studies, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia; Open Business School, Bangladesh Open University, Gazipur, Dhaka, Bangladesh ' Department of Foundations of Education, Faculty of Educational Studies, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia ' Department of Foundations of Education, Faculty of Educational Studies, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia ' Department of Foundations of Education, Faculty of Educational Studies, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia; Open Business School, Bangladesh Open University, Gazipur, Dhaka, Bangladesh ' Department of Education, Faculty of Education, Kebbi State University of Science and Technology, Aliero, Kebbi State, Nigeria; Department of Foundations of Education, Faculty of Educational Studies, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract: The lack of a regulated or legislative mechanism makes possible a market-driven approach as proposed by signalling theory. It encourages the recruitment of the best graduates among either matched or unmatched groups. This study aimed to explore the impact of misalignment among Civil Service Commission recruitment test, training and public administration majors in Bangladesh. The paper employs a quantitative method, using both descriptive and multinomial logistic regression to make its argument. The selected sample includes 2919 participants from the Bangladesh Public Service Commission. Findings revealed that public administration major graduates are employed in fewer administrative roles (4%) in public service administrative jobs compared to their counterparts who graduated from non-public administration majors (96%). Furthermore, the results revealed that public administration major graduates did worse in job recruitment tests and training. These findings strongly suggest that there is an important relationship between education, recruitment test and training misalignment on one hand, and the performance of public administration major graduates on the other. It is concluded that there is a need for policy reform to align public administration majors/degrees, recruitment tests and training in civil service administrative jobs. The goal should be to maximise the efficacy of public service and education budgets and reduce the mismatch between education and the job market.

Keywords: misalignment; recruitment test; skills mapping; public administration majors; civil service commission; training.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIE.2025.145925

International Journal of Management in Education, 2025 Vol.19 No.3, pp.263 - 283

Received: 10 May 2024
Accepted: 13 Jun 2024
Published online: 30 Apr 2025 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article