A realistic basis for higher education reform in Sri Lanka

A text of a speech delivered by Prof. Wiswa Warnapala, Minister of Higher Education at the Workshop on National Policy Frame work on Higher Education organized by the National Education Commission on 6th December, 2008 at Browns Beach Hotel, Negombo.

(December 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The knowledge-driven strategies of development have assigned a special place to Universities and other tertiary institutions, and the social and economic progress is achieved today primarily through the advancement and application of knowledge. In the modern world, knowledge is generated and disseminated by the Universities and other allied higher educational institutions. All the developing countries, including that of Sri Lanka, have invested heavily in the Universities and other institutions of learning.

Since it has been recognised that Universities and tertiary institutions have a direct relationship to the process of economic and social development, they need to be adequately geared to the creation, dissemination and application of knowledge and for building technical, professional and vocational capacity of a given country. The World Bank, for instance, says that ‘ sustainable transformation and growth throughout the economy are not possible without the capacity-building contribution of an innovative tertiary education system’. It is in this context that I propose to examine and comment upon the areas in which immediate reforms are necessary to make higher education an important factor in development and change in Sri Lanka.

The University system of Sri Lanka, as we know, came into existence during the colonial period, and the University of Ceylon, the first unitary University, was established in 1942 and it was modelled on the colonial mould. Its functions came to be limited by the colonial objectives. The University of Ceylon, which displayed all the features of the Oxbridge model, was created as an autonomous and fully-fledged independent residential institution, which, because of its elitist orientation, operated on the basis of a highly restricted admission policy. Though the Universities began to expand in the sixties and seventies in response to the social demand model of education which came to be implemented in 1944, they, though emulated the University of Ceylon, did not break-away from the same traditions and practices which dominated and guided the academic life of the Universities. The expansion of the Universities created more opportunities for the secondary-school leavers to enter the Universities but the question of access remained the major problem within the system. In the year 2005, a total of 108,357 candidates were eligible to apply for University admission, and it meant that 54.27 percent were qualified to enter a University. The annual intake was only 13,653; the intake in 2008 is in the region of 20,000, and this, again, means that nearly 100,000 are left out of the system. This is the major challenge before the Government, and the question is how to improve the access to higher educational opportunities. In most developing countries, the enrollment expansion has suffered because of fiscal constraints. In the low and low middle income countries, the enrollment has been increasing on an average 6.2 percent per year. In the upper-middle income countries, it has been increasing at 7.3 percent a year. In Sri Lanka, the enrollment rate in public tertiary institutions have stagnated at 2 percent since 1990 due to lack of enough public resources. In the recent years, expenditure per student too has increased and this is yet another constraint which interferes with the expansion of the enrollment. In formulating new policies in the sphere of higher education, the question of access needs to be addressed as the secondary school sector continued to produce more and more aspirants who wish to get into the Universities. Yet another issue, which is related to the question of access, is the fact that most of the secondary-school leavers belong to the Arts stream; for instance, in 2004, 96716 candidates were qualified for University entrance, out of which 45,610 fell within the category of Arts. This is largely due to the absence of Science-stream A/L classes in the rural areas and therefore all students, have no other choice except to get enrolled to follow Arts-oriented subjects in the schools, and this has been the pattern since the sixties. The effect of this exodus on the Universities was that they were compelled to introduce courses heavily weighted in favour of Arts subjects. The traditional disciplines related to Oriental Languages and Culture, are to dominate the syllabi in the initial stages and they, along with other Arts subjects, continued to dominate the system; the over-emphasis on such subjects need to be corrected through a scheme of rationalization in order to produce a graduate whose academic training has some relationship to the requirements of the world of work.

In Sri Lanka, higher educational institutions depend heavily on State funding, and the system, from the very inception, began as a State funded system which, due to financial constraints, has become a major burden on the State. The unit costs-cost per student-are relatively high, and this, again, is subject to fluctuations as well. Most developing countries has to grapple with this problem of improving the quality of higher education in the context of increasing expenditure per student. The enrollment rates have expanded; for example, the Sri Lankan Governments want to increase the intake, and various pressures stimulate the demand for an increase in the intake. This kind of intensified demand for an expansion of higher educational opportunities create a severe strain on the resources of the State; in Sri Lanka, the public resources available to finance the existing institutions are limited and because of the lack of enough resources several problems have arisen within the system. The predominant role of the State in the provision of higher education in Sri Lanka was rooted in our political culture, and any radical change in this relationship needs to be handled with extreme care. It was possible for the State to manage the system when it was totally elite-oriented; the conversion of the system into a mass system has resulted in State’s inability to finance it. The failure to finance the system properly and adequately has resulted in an erosion of quality. In the Budget estimates for 2009, a total of Rs. 22,167.5 million has been allocated. In a system of higher education based on entirely on State funding, the main question is how to allocate the available resources; the increased competition for scarce resources have reduced the capacity of Governments to support higher education, resulting in a sharp decline in the public expenditure on higher education. Amidst such financial constraints, the Sri Lankan Government has allocated a substantial sum for the development of higher education. The question of State funding and the lack of enough public resources lead us to examine the traditional relationship between the State and higher education. In formulating a new reform strategy, this question, though politically sensitive, has to be addressed, and any revision of this relationship, which, in my view, is fundamental to the future of higher education in Sri Lanka, is certain to lead to profound changes in the field of higher education. There is a private sector in the non-University tertiary sector, and 44 private sector institutions have been identified; a large number of them are institutions engaged in professional education and training, and this sector, though not as prominent as the State sector, caters to nearly 50,000 students who spend more than Rs.100,000 a year. Yet another feature of the system is that it is very much distanced from the formal Universities system. In addition, more than 25 Universities operate under the cross-border Campus principle, and these Universities either establish a Campus in Sri Lanka or conduct a degree programme in collaboration with some institution operating in Sri Lanka. In my view, it is high time that we generate a discussion on the relationship between the State and the Universities as our limited public resources have to be spent rationally and efficiently.

Next important question, to which the reformers need to give thought, is the diversification of the system of higher education with a view to expanding the non-University tertiary institutions. The traditional University, in the given context of globalization, has proved very expensive and inappropriate to meet the multiple demands of economic and social development. It has failed to satisfy the learning needs of a diverse student community. In Sri Lanka, where there is a considerable social demand for higher education, the system needs to be differentiated with the establishment of non-University tertiary institutions which can make the system of higher education more responsive to the changing needs of the labour market. The enrollment in non-University institutions have grown faster than in the traditional Universities. The principal advantage of such an institution is the expansion in the access, which, in the context of Sri Lanka, is the major problem. By diversifying the system with non-University institutions the average cost of University education could be reduced. Many non-University institutions, specially those Technical Colleges and Institutes can offer training opportunities for those who can respond to the demands of the labour market. Sri Lanka, therefore, needs a network of Technical Colleges which can conduct multi-disciplinary programmes in different fields. It is only through such a network of Technical Colleges that the country can produce skilled labour demanded in a market economy. In Sri Lanka, the perception of both parents and pupils is in favour of University education, and this is an aspect of the colonial legacy. In the colonial period – and even in the post-independence period - the emphasis was on scholastic education, because of which technical and vocational education suffered. The necessity for technical education, though came to be recognised in the early sixties, remained under-funded, and the system of Craft and Trade Colleges was not integrated into the Higher Education sector; they, in addition, did not attract the secondary school-leavers who did not qualify for the University. In this context, the creation of a network of Technical Colleges could address the social demand by providing more access to these secondary school leavers. The SLIATE was created to address this question and it has expanded in the last ten years, offering higher educational opportunities to a large number of students who passed the A/L examination. This is the only way by which access could be expanded by providing alternative higher educational opportunities. Both Distance Education and Open Learning too could be used to increase the access, and the Government proposes to expand the opportunities through the Open University which, in the last several decades, has done a commendable job by providing additional access in the field of higher education. In addition, the Government proposes to strengthen the system of vocational education; legislation is ready for the establishment of a Vocational University, which, in my view, is the first ‘proletarian’ University in Sri Lanka. The members of the working class, through the lateral entry principle, can get inside this University to get a marketable qualification. The Vocational University has been planned in such a way so as to provide higher educational opportunities to those in employment as carpenters and masons to obtain a professional qualification. The establishment of this University represented a break-away from the conventional University, and its teaching programmes are less expensive. This, again, represents an aspect of the diversification which we propose to undertake as a part of our reform strategy. A system which remained totally scholastic, due to the impact of the colonial legacy, needs to be transformed with an effective programme of diversification of higher educational institutions. It is only through diversification that a variety of training programmes, based on the concept of relevance, could be started; in addition, it would result in broadening the participation in higher education.

In the last two decades, the criticism was that the Universities deteriorated as centres of learning; one reason attributed to this process of decline was the expansion of the intake and the creation of new Universities. It was true that far reaching changes took place within the system as a result of the expansion which, in the context of the impact of the social demand of education, was inevitable, and there was a decline in the learning culture. The acquisition of knowledge, in such an environment, became secondary and the quality of the graduate began to deteriorate to such an extent that most graduates, especially those in the Arts stream, became unemployable. Universities should not exist for purely utilitarian and functional purposes; they need to understand the changing character of society and adapt accordingly. Lord Robbins Report, while rejecting the attempt to describe the purposes of higher education in terms of any single end, adumbrated four objectives. In the first place, a higher education institution is designed to provide training and instruction in ‘skills suitable to play apart in the general division of labour’. They also stated that ‘what is taught should be taught is such a way as to promote the general powers of the mind’. It meant that Universities should be concerned with the production of ‘cultivated men and women’. They should be concerned with the advancement of learning, and finally Robbins Report envisaged the University as the channel for ‘the transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship’. Of course, these objectives have changed in the last fifty years, and as the Frank Report of 1966 of Britain mentioned, research and teaching still remain the main functions of a modern University. - Sri Lanka Guardian