Established in the capital city, Dhaka, in 2003, World University Bangladesh took an immense step forward with the inauguration of its new purpose-built waterfront campus in the suburb of Uttara in March 2019.
As well as offering far superior facilities to its previous city centre location, it had the space necessary for expansion and is designed for a student roll of up to 12,000, double the number attending the university at the time.
A private institution, WUB has had significant political connections from the start, with its Chancellor, the President of Bangladesh, handing out the scrolls and certificates at its first degree ceremonies. Its vision was "to create leaders whose brains are tiny factories making enormous contributions to economic emancipation and social well-being".
Proclaiming "an American style of education" among its selling-points, it assesses its students using the grade point average system. There are three faculties at the university. The World School of Business incorporates business administration along with tourism and hospitality; arts and humanities includes English and law while the science and engineering faculty offers options including pharmacy, architecture and five different engineering disciplines.
The new campus should enable it to build on its record of academic innovation, reckoning to be the first university in Bangladesh to have offered an undergraduate course in electro-mechanical engineering or a master's in business education, and one of the first in South Asia to have offered, as it did in 2016, a BSc in mechatronics, a course which seeks to mesh varied disciplines and skills of engineering and allied trades.
