by Dr Jayaratne Pinikahana
A large number of Sri Lankan academics are working in foreign universities as research fellows, lecturers, senior lecturers, readers, and professors who left the country over the last few decades or so and most of whom have signed agreements and bonds with their respective universities in Sri Lanka. The maximum time period the university academics need to serve their respective university after completing a PhD with 3 years and 9 months study leave is 5 years. If they were on 2 year study leave, the maximum time period would be 4 years.
As Dr Nawaratne indicated, if these academics decide to come back and serve the country the agreed period of their bond that they signed at the time of their departure, they will be exempted from paying back their bond. This seems to be very sensible and courageous move made by the ministry at a time of a great need. The government has decided to pardon some hard-core terrorists despite the fact that they killed service personnel and all sorts of people during the war. Therefore, it is not hard to understand the logic behind pardoning the academics who violated the bond agreement with their respective universities.
Why they need to return?
Although accurate statistics on these academics are not available, it is estimated that about 1000 academics who were on study leave with financial bonds have not returned to the country after completing their Master’s or PhD degrees. It is also known that although some academics have returned and served their respective universities for a few years but they have left the country without completing their obligatory time period. Currently, the university system has 5500 academic positions but only about 4500 positions have been filled. There is a greater shortage of academics in all areas of academic disciplines but critically in engineering, medicine, allied health, management, and commerce. Staff shortage in many regional universities seems to be far worse than in many ‘metropolitan’ universities like Peradeniya, Colombo or Moratuwa.
After the war in 2009, President Mahinda Rajapaksa invited the expatriate professionals, predominantly the academics who had left the country during the war to return and contribute to rebuild the country. Although these academics had been sent to foreign Universities for postgraduate studies mainly for masters and PhDs at State expense, they have opted not to return due to the unsettled conditions in the country. They have found similar positions in foreign universities in many European countries including Australia, UK, Canada and USA. Now the country is free from terrorism and life is back to normal. It is time to take a hard look at the excuses they made not to return to the country after completing their postgraduate studies and reschedule their future. Most of the vacancies in Sri Lankan universities have been created by the failure of these academics to return to the country and if they decide to return now, the shortage of lecturers in many universities mainly in non-metropolitan rural universities can be resolved with ease.
There are new developments in the higher education sector such as the introduction of private universities where new opportunities for teaching and research will be available in near future. And yet, as part of the proposal made by the Ministry of Higher Education to upgrade 6 Sri Lankan universities to the international level, it is vital to attract more experienced and skilful expatriate academics to our university system.
What else government need to do?
It is still the same old story about academic staff salaries which are much lower than similar grades in financial services sector, private sector or even in the NGOs. There is very little point in comparing the salaries of our university lecturers and their counterparts in western universities. To give some idea of disparity between these two worlds in terms of salaries, it is fair to say that the lecturers in western countries like UK and Australia are paid more than ten times than in Sri Lanka. It is no secret that a University Professor in Sri Lanka after years of hard work with masters and a PhD plus fifteen years of teaching, and research experience receives a moderate salary of Rs 50,000 a month while a marketing assistant or an insurance broker with less than GCE advanced level qualification receive double this sum!
In addition to bond exemption, the government needs to solve their pay issue immediately once and for all. A decent salary which is similar to India in the region should be offered with some additional incentives to lure them back to the country. If the government is willing to increase the salaries of academics as proposed by the University Staff Association, a lot of things will change for better.
These academics who are in self-exile know that their service is essential at this crucial time and they know that they spent taxpayers’ money, and they want to come back and some of whom have already decided to come back. However, I know personally that some Sri Lankan academics who are living in Australia are very much willing to come back but they find it very hard to find any work in Sri Lanka. I heard that some heads of departments of Sri Lankan universities are reluctant to recruit qualified expatriate academics who are willing to return mainly because of the fear of threat to their authority. Some of these heads haven’t even got PhD’s or any academic qualifications to be a head of an academic department and naturally they don’t want to see anybody above them who might smell like a threat to their ‘academic’ authority.
I personally know that one experienced senior academic from Australia arrived in Sri Lanka the other day all the way from Australia from his own expenses (about Rs 300,000!) to attend an interview for a senior lecturer position at Peradeniya University. But the Head of the Department and a professor from the same department had visibly acted against this academic at the interview despite the fact that the Vice-chancellor maintained a very balanced and sympathetic approach to this candidate. In the end he was not considered for this position (in fact, they had two positions but he was not considered for any of these positions), and returned to Australia in disgust! This would not scare away anybody who is willing to come back and serve the country and it is not unusual to have a ‘black sheep’ in any human grouping. Nevertheless, the ministry and UGC need to ensure that the expatriate academics who are willing to return will not suffer any undue embarrassments of this sort from people who got the authority in our universities.
The University Grant Commission should coordinate this project by establishing a link between these expatriate academics who are willing to return and the university departments in which these academics are willing to join in. Interviews for academic positions can be arranged through video -conferencing facility or telephone interviewing since our universities are not in a position to reimburse the money incurred on air tickets and other expenses.
In this context, the Government should also ensure that for academics who respond to this appeal and return sacrificing everything they have in the west, it would be worth the sacrifice. We need to understand that some of these academics left the country during the war giving the war as an excuse and the real cause behind this brain drain was the discontent, frustration and disgruntlement caused by poor salaries and other facilities in our universities.
Personal note
On my personal note, I have had a hard think about this appeal driven by a sense of conscience. I have already decided to resign from my position in Australia and come back to Sri Lanka if a suitable academic position is offered in a university. I recently made a request to the Vice-chancellor at the University of Ruhuna expressing my desire to rejoin the department of sociology. I do hope that many more expatriate academics would follow suit.
(The writer can be reached at jpinikahana@gmail.com )
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