A remarkable fact about Bangladesh is that its economy is growing rapidly as is its large youthful population. 34 percent of its 160 million people are aged 15 or younger, and the country has an opportunity to realize the full benefit of this “demographic dividend’ in the years ahead — but only if it can provide education and training to the millions of students who need it.
Indeed, the country has seen a tremendous increase in enrolment over the last decade or so. Total tertiary enrolment has more than tripled since 2000. The strength of public universities was direly insufficient to keep up with this phenomenal increase in the demand for higher education. Against this backdrop, there was a change in the age-old notion that the state alone is to shoulder the burden of tertiary education and accommodating the private universities to share this national duty, of course, without making any compromise in academic excellence and other matrices of higher university education. Metropolitan University joins this historic shift to bring quality higher education at affordable cost to the doorsteps of the students.
With the approval of the Ministry of Education under the Private University Act of 1992 (which was amended first in 1998 and then again in 2010), Metropolitan University came into being on 3rd May 2003.
Dr. Toufique Rahman Chowdhury, an educationist and a promising entrepreneur of the country initiated the idea of founding Metropolitan University with the direct participation and assistance of a few of his close friends, acquaintances, and associates.