The Vanishing Literature Student: Employability Problematisation and the ELT Turn in Bangladeshi English Departments

Abstract

This article examines how Bangladeshi policy and programme texts make reorganising English departments around English language teaching and employability seem necessary, and how literature’s position changes. Literature long anchored Bangladeshi English departments. Since the 1990s, privatisation, outcome-based education and accreditation have reshaped higher education around graduate employability. The study uses a mixed documentary design. Qualitative analysis applies governmentality and Bacchi’s WPR approach. The population comprises national policy texts and English departmental programme documents. The purposive sample includes six national and nine departmental documents (2010–2026). Descriptive credit analysis quantifies literature’s share in six curricula. National texts frame unemployment as a skills deficit, leaving literature unnamed. Outcome and accreditation templates translate literary study into generic competencies. Literature still holds 44–61% of credits. Yet it vanishes from governing discourse and, where streams exist, enrolment. Regulators should permit discipline-specific outcomes within outcome-based frameworks. Departments should articulate literature’s purposes before outcome mapping.