A marketing plan for Leading University,Sylhet
The Context
Throughout much of Bangladesh history our private university were protected enclaves, respected well enough, but mostly unnoticed and allowed to go about their business unchallenged and largely unfettered. What a contrast today when the university finds itself defined as a key economic, political, social, and cultural institution as the result of extraordinary transformations occurring throughout our nation and the world. We are rapidly evolving into a new post-industrial society in which the key strategic resource necessary for prosperity and social well-being has become knowledge itself. Indeed, we are entering what might be called "an age of knowledge" in which educated people and their ideas play the role that in the past was played by natural resources or geographic location or labor pools. In the pluralistic, knowledge-intensive, global future that is our destiny it is clear that the quality of and access to education in general, higher education in particular, and the research university most specifically of all are rapidly becoming the key factors in determining the strength and prosperity of our state.

The strategic marketing plan: 1 the increasingly critical role assigned to universities has not brought with it increased prestige, public confidence, or respect. Instead, like so many other institutions in our society, we find ourselves roundly criticized from right, left, and center and even from within by many faculty, students, and staff for flaws large and small, fundamental and trivial. The private university is clearly under attack: attacked by parents and students for the uncontrolled escalation of tuition, criticized by governors for financial irresponsibility, investigated by the Department of Justice for price fixing and tuition and financial aid, and attacked by the left and the right for the quality of undergraduate education.
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The fundamental problem here is the degree to which the universities have allowed others to set the agenda, to determine the issues concerning higher education. Personal mark by launching a new offensive against a more vulnerable target, higher education, by accusing the universities of elitism and disregard for fundamental values, while characterizing their students as "spoiled". The attack on the values of the modern university was joined by intellectuals .
The attacks launched against higher education in the ensuing years can be roughly classified into three areas: i) Portrayal of universities as big, self-centered, and greedy: Included in this class of concerns are the rising costs of education--first launched by the media, but rapidly embraced by politicians, "price-fixing" charges leveled at private universities which were engaged in consultation on financial aid packages and tuition setting, and most recently, the charges of inappropriate use of federal research grants, most dramatically illustrated by overhead ("indirect cost") on research grants. ii) The social climate on university campuses: The charges leveled at universities concerning racism on the campuses--fueled by the growth of a new generation of student activists generating their power base from ethnic tensions; concerns about excessive alcohol and drug use. iii) The intellectual integrity of universities: Here, the charges include the faculty's preoccupation with "useless" research at the expense of teaching, the political correctness debate, and scientific fraud.
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It is clear that as long as higher education allows others to determine and control the agenda, it will continue to find itself on the defensive, responding to first one negative issue and then another. This continued siege of the academy will continue to erode public confidence and trust in the Bangladesh university, at just that moment in our history in which we become even more dependent on these institutions.
A Proposal It is clear that higher education must take steps to regain control of the agenda, to begin to control the public debate, changing or reshaping the context of the debate to achieve a more positive emphasis. Key will be a well-conceived campaign to turn people's attention to what higher education is really all about: educating the young people of our nation for the challenges ahead, doing the research that will determine our prosperity and quality of life, and providing the leadership necessary for our nation in a rapidly changing world.
Strategic marketing process
1) Develop the themes ,vision statement,measureable objectives
2) Market research,.identify constituencies ,determine attitudes
3) Shape market (and objectives) Strategic plans at each level building network use consultants as necessary
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Attempting to better shape these views and align them with the objectives of higher education. Three levels of activity have been identified: i) a national effort, dealing with the Bangladesh public at large (and the national media). ii) a broad outreach effort across the state of Michigan, dealing with public perception, the media, as well as with a more focused political agenda, and iii) local efforts, aimed both at the various constituencies on campus (students, faculty, staff) and those in the surrounding

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Vision Statement: The University of Leading seeks to provide the leadership for Bangladesh and the world in determining the nature of the university of the 21st Century, through the unique combination of the quality, size, comprehensiveness, and innovation characterizing its educational, research, and service programs
In arriving at such a vision statement, we must keep foremost in mind the fundamental missions, purposes, and values of the university. There are a variety of forums and processes for this effort, including the Capital Campaign effort, the Futures Group, and so forth.
Next will be the articulation of some specific objectives for the 1990s. Here we should seek to develop these objectives in as precise and quantitative a form as possible, so we can measure our progress--or lack thereof--quite clearly.
Example of possible Objectives: I. To achieve a campus community representative of the rich diversity of our state and our nation. 1. To build a truly multicultural learning community, resisting the forces of separatism and particularism, and instead developing mechanisms to unite people from different racial, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds. 2. To restructure the University by implementing total quality management methods to improve the quality and efficiency of operations. Develop a series of quantitative targets to measure this effort. 3. To move to a public/private hybrid university, similar to Cornell: ...with instate tuition = 50% outstate tuition = 50% private levels ...with a mixture of private and public universities with the autonomy of a private university
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To become the first truly "world" university in Bangladesh moving from “state” "national" "world” enrollments . There are many other quantitative objectives we might consider: i) having all of our programs ranked in the top 10. ii) Doubling the number of members of the National Academies on our faculty iv) attracting (or developing) "x" Nobel Laureates on our faculty v) becoming the leading public university in the number of citations of the publications of our faculty vi) Becoming the nation's leading university in sponsored research volume (just as we now are in clinical volume or athletic attendance

Particular Strengths and Weaknesses Strengths and Opportunities:
1. The University has extraordinary emotional reach through its quite unusual success
2. The University already is far down the road toward becoming a national public university.
Weaknesses and Challenges: 1. Concerns have been raised that the University is rather short on broad vision within the ranks. 2. There is no history of strong private support for higher education in Bangladesh. 3. The reality of the situation is that the most distinguished and comprehensive of the public research university are well down the road to becoming more "private-like", both in their financing and their operating philosophies