Walk into EWU's Aftabnagar campus today and you see red brick buildings, thousands of students, 400+ faculty members (including both full-time and adjunct), and 14 departments across 3 faculties. It is easy to forget that none of this existed thirty years ago.
In September 1996, East West University quietly began its journey from a rented space at 43 Mohakhali C/A, Dhaka — with just 6 faculty members, 20 students, and 3 programs: BBA, BSc in Computer Science, and BA in English. No grand campus. No thousands of faces. Just a small group of people who believed something needed to change about how higher education worked in Bangladesh.
The man behind it was Prof. Dr. Mohammed Farashuddin — a prominent economist who had just returned from a 13-year stint at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). He could have stayed abroad. He chose not to. Instead, he gathered a small group of academics, business leaders, and professionals to form the Progoti Foundation for Education and Development (PFED) - a non-profit, non-political, charitable organization - and EWU became its first and most ambitious project.
What is worth knowing is that the name "East West" was never just a name. It was a deliberate statement of intent — to build a university that honored Eastern culture and values while meeting international academic standards. That balance has shaped the institution ever since.
The founding vision was also sharply focused on access. EWU was not designed to be another elite private institution. It was built as a purposeful intervention against the structural inequalities that had long shaped who could and could not access quality higher education in Bangladesh. In 2000, the university reinforced that commitment by passing a resolution that any financial surplus would be fully reinvested — never distributed as profit.
From 20 students to 10,000+. From 6 faculty to 400+. From 3 programs to 29 academic programs — 15 undergraduate and 14 graduate, across 14 departments and 3 faculties. The numbers tell one story. The intent behind them tells a better one.
