Location of an engineering faculty in Sri Lanka : The unusual criteria, lessons learnt and ethics issues
| by S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
( July 06, 2012, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Abstract – Sri Lanka recently decided to set up a new engineering faculty, in addition to the three already in existence. This paper describes the unusual considerations that went into the author making a recommendation on the location of the faculty at the behest of the University Grants Commission which is principally responsible for all university development and funding.
While in most countries the criteria on whether to set about establishing a new faculty and where would depend on need, in Sri Lanka, as in many countries where government is solely in charge of universities, the final process and its outcome depended on many additional criteria to the normal, including political criteria.
While need was certainly a part of it, in this instance, the author who was commissioned to write the report, had to a) Examine regional aspirations in a country rent by communal strife; b) Weigh the viability of big cities where industry can support an engineering faculty’s research and training programs and such programs’ associated placement needs, against the demands of rural cities long denied development; c) Consider the worries of parents close to any new faculty that their children would be sent to an as yet undeveloped faculty as opposed to the established ones where they would otherwise go; d) Look at the need to build hostel blocks in a cash-strapped national economy, which would become necessary in rural areas, as opposed to urban areas where private rooms for students are available from residential homes; e) Worry about the need of politicians to show that they are influential in settling the issue against the actual optimal situation, playing off presidential, ministerial and local politicians’ interests and their positions; f) Research the ability of students located rurally (educated in the Tamil or Sinhalese language to high school) to pick up English which is now increasingly important for employment prospects; g) Consider the rich additional course offerings available to students in established cities through other faculties h) Weigh the available water supply and recreational facilities in a rural setting and i) Consider the fears of local communities that their “traditional homelands” would be vitiated by the government using the faculty to move in other ethnic groups for political reasons.
In the end, the issue was settled by ministerial directive based entirely on political considerations. The paper, using this experience, draws lessons on how best to serve the student community in such a situation; especially when the government is exclusively in charge of higher education as in Sri Lanka. This paper is also a full report on the development of the new faculty of engineering and raises many ethical issues for engineers in education administration.
Keywords: Professional Ethics, Jaffna, Engineering Faculty, Site-location, Sri Lanka, politics.
S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. His research interests focus on computational methods, especially computing electromagnetic fields by the finite element method. His ongoing research is in shape optimization in coupled problems determining the location and shape of objects so as to accomplish design objects in electrothermal problems in electric machinery, eco-friendly buildings, hyperthermia treatment planning in oncology, etc. This work has led to a long term effort building up a modern design environment pulling together design rules with artificial intelligence, software engineering, mesh generators, matrix solvers, optimization techniques and libraries of parts and material properties. His work has also led to efforts in nondestructive evaluation and the localization of lightning hits from measurements. His work earned him the Fellow status from the IEEE (1995) and the higher doctorate, the D.Sc. degree, from University of London (1993).
Responding to the call of the IEEE to be engaged in society, he has substantial research accomplishments in the area of human rights and peace education and was a Fellow of Scholar Rescue Fund, Institute of International Education, NY and on the panel of speakers for the Scholars at Risk Network, NY.
I. University Education in Sri Lanka and Official Histories
The modern Sri Lankan university system began in 1823 with the Batticotta Seminary in Jaffna (in the North) established by the Presbyterian America Ceylon Mission from New England. This, together with the Wesleyan Methodist Mission’s Seminary in Jaffna (1834), is certified by the Colonial Secretary Sir James Emerson Tennent in a letter dated March 23, 1848 to Rufus Anderson, DD, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as “entitled to rank with many an European University.”1 Jaffna is the cultural capital of the Tamil minority of Sri Lanka, who occupied the North and East as the dominant majority while being scattered over the rest of Sri Lanka where the majority Sinhalese predominate (Fig. 1). The curriculum at Batticotta consisted of “In the Academical Department, Algebra, Euclid, Conic Sections, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Astronomy, Logic, Rhetoric, Mental and Moral Philosophy, Paley’s Natural Theology, Butler’s Analogy, Classical Tamil and Sanskrit; in the Normal Department Arithmetic, Algebra, Grammar, Geography, History, Natural theology, Tamil, Classical Reader, English Bible, and c.”2 The Wesleyan Seminary’s is said to have been similar in Tennent’s letter.1
These missionary colleges turned their attention to secondary education after the colonial government established University College Colombo in 1921 as an extended part of the federated University of London with its system of affiliated colleges. This was upgraded to the University of Ceylon in 1942 under Parliament’s Ceylon University Ordinance No. 186 of 1942.
This one University of Ceylon for the entire nation catered to less than 1% of the aspiring population and maintained very high standards. Graduates of the independent University of Ceylon were well regarded internationally as judged by their employment and postgraduate admission track records.
II. Ethnic Politics and Engineering
As a result of the missionary (mainly American missionary) educational efforts in the North, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, then numbering some 22% of the population, used to garner close to 50% of the competitive seats in engineering and medicine at the University of Ceylon; but because they shunned the humanities and social sciences, their overall share of university seats was proportionately well below their population.3, 4
This was not acceptable to the majority Sinhalese who introduced ethnic quotas from the admissions for the year 1970, the arguments centering around who was over-represented. Tamils prided themselves in doing well in mathematics and the sciences; and out of the four G.C.E. Advanced Level subjects for engineering admissions, namely Applied Mathematics, Pure Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, they tended to score highly in the first two. Adding 28 marks to the 4-subject Sinhalese aggregate before determining admissions as they did in 1970, was brazen communalism and brought in a lot of criticism from outside. It was the reverse of affirmative action – a majority imposing a higher standard on a minority for university admission – and it seemed shameful to outsiders and even many Sinhalese. Therefore ethnic quotas were soon abandoned in favor of what the government called standardization3 whereby the means in the two language streams were equated as were the standard deviations. Standardization is a legitimate exercise in education management when comparing performances in different subject streams. But this was the first time it was applied to compare students sitting the same subject papers in their different languages of instruction (the same question papers being used in translation). Since the Tamils did better in the sciences, standardization effectively brought Tamil marks down. It achieved the same goal as before of keeping Tamils out of the university but under the guise of a new scientific method. Before this, Tamils were just kept out of the university but now under standardization their grades too suffered, precluding them, upon being denied university admission, from applying for jobs based on their reduced grades. For example, as a result of standardization in one year in the mid-1970s a Tamil scoring below 55% in Physics got the grade of F whereas a Sinhalese with 65% in the same paper got the grade of A.
Further, the government arguing that the G.C.E. A. Levels were too diverting of student attention from other necessary student activities, reduced the G.C.E. A. Levels to three subjects, combining the two mathematics subjects into one. The Tamils saw it as a deliberate move to cut their feet off from under them.
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Figure 1: The Provinces and Major Cities of Sri Lanka |
In addition, the government also introduced regional quotas. This gave a socialist cover to moving away from raw marks for university admission. This allowed Tamils from poorer areas like Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Mannar and Vavuniya to enter the university more easily. Coopting some Tamils on to the standardization bandwagon muted the monolithic Tamil opposition to standardization while continuing with the overarching goal of eliminating Tamils from the professions.
In essence, engineering admissions from Jaffna were reduced further by regional quotas requiring a Jaffna student to score a lot more for engineering admissions.
The tougher admission standards for poor village Tamils vis-Ã -vis rich Sinhalese from Colombo on the grounds of Tamil privilege was embarrassing to the government clothing itself in the garb of socialism which therefore declared everything about examinations and admissions cut-off marks confidential. And under confidentiality, a lot of corruption was permitted which became public only when governments changed in 1977 – many had graduated as doctors and engineers (taking the most competitive university seats) and gone abroad by the time it was recognized that they never deserved admission for the few seats available although they possessed well above the minimum qualifications for admissions. This writer’s wife’s father was high up in the administrative service and he was offered by Sinhalese colleagues in 1974 to have her marks altered behind the closed doors of the examination branch of the ministry to upgrade her admission from the Faculty of Science to the Faculty of Medicine, an offer that was politely declined.
Different admission and grade standards for the two different ethnic communities (often mistakenly referred to as races) by a government that insisted that Sri Lanka is one indivisible nation, stoked Tamil separatism and set off student unrest.5 The regional quotas ensured that the loudest voice for separation would come more from Jaffna than any other Tamil region.
The cry for separation enraged the Sinhalese who increased repression and set off a pogrom against Tamils in 1977 and 1983 as the Sri Lankan President justified the pogrom thus in the height of the killings in July-August 1983: “I cannot see, and my government cannot see any other way by which we can appease the natural desire and request of the Sinhala people.”6
In the brutal civil war that followed, the most educated of the Tamils fled the country, making it necessary by the year 2004 officially to categorize Jaffna as a backward region for university admissions. The Tamils, who had first had their opportunities restricted by standardization and regional quotas, now found that the system increased their admission. By and large, Tamils left behind were of lower quality (with the exception of some with strong reasons to stay) and these ensured their control of institutions in the Tamil areas by being obsequious to the government and keeping out those of good quality. It made life for Tamils even harder.
The ethnic war for separation by the Tamil Tigers from 1983 added to the all-round collapse of the education system as a poor country diverted its budget to defense, with defense spending (nearly always being marked by kick-backs) justified in the name of nationalism. Qualified Tamils nearly always fled. Sinhalese too fled as the inconveniences of a war-budget and checkpoints and bombings took their toll.
Table 1: The 15 Universities of Sri Lanka and their International Ranking
University | Rank | Nearby City | |
1 | University of Peradeniya | 2220 | Kandy |
2 | University of Colombo | 2240 | Colombo |
3 | University of Moratuwa | 3514 | Colombo |
4 | University of Ruhuna | 3514 | Matara/Galle |
5 | Open University of Sri Lanka | 5988 | Colombo |
6 | Univ. of Srijayawardenepura | 6382 | Colombo |
7 | University of Kelaniya | 6594 | Colombo |
8 | Sabaragamuwa University | 6382 | Ratnapura |
9 | University of Jaffna | 9406 | Jaffna |
10 | Eastern Univ. of Sri Lanka | 10859 | Batticloa |
11 | Wayamba University of Sri Lanka | 11488 | Kurunagala |
12 | South Eastern University of Sri Lanka | >12000 | Kalmunai/Pottuvil |
13 | Rajarata University of Sri Lanka | >12000 | Anuradhapura |
14 | Uva Wellassa University | >12000 | Badulla |
15 | University of the Visual & Performing Arts | >12000 | Colombo |
III. Engineering, and Engineering for University of Jaffna
The university system was rapidly expanded to meet student aspirations, eventually accommodating about 3.1% of the population by 2004.7 The World Bank’s target for reaching Newly Industrialized Country (NIC) status was having 8% of the 18-22 age cohort in degree programs.8 The single University of Ceylon first branched into regional campuses in the early 1970s which were then broken off into independent Universities numbering 15 today; these, with the closest city center in brackets, being presented in Table 1. The cities are shown in Fig. 1 to give the reader an idea of the geographical distribution of the universities over the island.
Out of these 15 universities, it is seen that six are effectively in Colombo and five of these six universities have been the best9 and have grown much faster than the others because of the willingness and even wishes of staff to be close to Colombo, with the benefits of urban life including access to good schools for their children. The exception is the University of Visual and Performing Arts which is staffed mainly by artistes without university training, which explains its lower ranking.
Of the out-of-Colombo universities, Ruhuna is an exception in doing relatively well because the Matara area, like Jaffna, has produced many intellectuals and has had time to develop. If not for the war and the isolation which came with it, it is likely that Jaffna too would rank at the top at least with Ruhuna.
An element of regionalism was introduced with Tamil areas in the North and East getting University of Jaffna and Eastern University of Sri Lanka in the 1970s, while the Muslim Southeast got its South Eastern University a little later. Technically all universities are national under the central University Grants Commission (UGC). However, the war meant that only Tamils and Muslims were fully willing to go to the Tamil and Muslim Universities in the war-ravaged Northeast of the island. But the problem with expansion of the university system was staff. Many with modern western credentials to teach in a university had left as the country faced difficulties stemming from the war which also contributed to the politicization of the administration.10, 11
The humanities and social sciences, the pure sciences and even medicine adapted by issuing local postgraduate degrees, mainly at master’s level, to churn out large numbers of postgraduate degree holders minimally if not ideally qualified to teach in a university. Such master’s degree holders, however, usually lack the language skills to teach subject degrees in the sciences and medicine which are still officially conducted in English; as a result, in practice a lot of the teaching is in the vernacular. Nor did they have the research skills to do independent research of internationally publishable quality. But the arrangement sufficed to carry on.
In engineering however, with occasional exceptions such as the Department of Production Engineering at Peradeniya where unofficially teaching is in Sinhalese thereby keeping Tamils out of the program, the standard of a Ph.D. holder fluent enough in English to teach was retained; not in the centralized recruitment schemes, but at the selection committees following advertisement of vacancies. That is, the engineers academics on the engineering selection committees maintained standards higher than those required by the ordinances. This made expansion of engineering programmes very difficult – for finding those who can satisfactorily teach in English is well nigh impossible.
In late 1979, as the university system expanded, the Tamils staked a claim for an engineering faculty in the Tamil North which had the University of Jaffna at its historical peak. Smarting under the differential admissions system and given the relative peace of the times, many Tamil senior academics from Peradeniya had moved to the North and were publishing under the Jaffna imprimatur. The confident Jaffna Senate and university resolved that a Faculty of Engineering be established in Jaffna. In that era of nationalism preceding the civil war, however, when Sinhalese held all the power, the Senate made the mistake of appointing a feasibility study committee consisting entirely of Tamils in the academic system, albeit most of them accomplished, to study the matter and report. These were Prof. T. Sivaprakasapillai and his son Dr. Pratab Sivaprakasapillai, Dr. A. Thurairajah, Dr. Kumar David and Mr. A. Ragunathan. Many equally or more qualified Sinhalese were not brought on board to make the case.
As a result, their report of 1980 would have been seen by the UGC as pressure from Tamil quarters when it was passed on to them by the University. The UGC naturally sat on it – for years!
Prof. A. Thurairajah, a civil engineer and respected leftist with a Cambridge doctorate, had been Dean of the Engineering Faculty at Peradeniya which was once the only engineering faculty in Sri Lanka. His reputation for brilliance came from a reputed achievement of having the highest marks on record as an engineering undergraduate at the University of Ceylon, although his later performance in research was quite ordinary as is the case for most who return home to serve after their doctoral studies. This is because, in addition to being cut off from facilities, they are not subject to any pressure to publish and accorded a high status in society based on their undergraduate performance. But for undergraduate teaching with few research expectations as in Sri Lanka, that system works and works well.
This much academically respected Thurairajah had been disillusioned when he himself had been turned into a refugee at the University of Peradeniya when a calculated attack on Tamils was made at the university in May 1983.12 Over his problems there he had once even resigned, but was persuaded to withdraw his letter of resignation. As a leftist with a vision for a socialist world, and thus distinct from Tamil nationalists who wanted a separate state, he was socially respected in the South. When he was appointed Vice Chancellor (VC) of Jaffna in August 1988, the Engineering Faculty for Jaffna moved a further step and a UGC Committee consisting entirely of Sinhalese but good friends of Thurairajah’s (Dr. S.M.A. Perera, a member of the UGC with rich industry experience and, Prof. C. Dahanayake, Prof. Willie Mendis, and Prof. Milton Amaratunga, all at the full academic rank of professor unlike the Jaffna committee) plus a nominee of the Vice Chancellor of Jaffna, endorsed an Engineering Faculty in their report of Nov. 1988. They recommended that the faculty be sited at Kilinochchi, 45 miles South of Jaffna with agricultural lands and a man-made lake, called Iranaimadu, which had been made to retain rain water for irrigation. A hundred acres of land in Kilinochchi were alienated by the government for the faculty.
It was the time when civil engineering was booming through river diversion projects in Sri Lanka and jobs in the Middle East and Africa. Thurairajah had come from an older era where civil engineering had large labs with models of fluid channels almost 40 m long.
Accordingly land had been allocated as recommended. But Thurairajah could not build up the faculty even then. Although the government approved the faculty with the assumption of protection from the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), the Tamil Tiger rebels began an insurgency against the IPKF disrupting the region with a bloody secondary conflict.5 Thurairajah was wooing this writer on a visit to California in 1989 to come as a department head and it was agreed that this writer would return in 1993 as classes got under way and students reached the second or third year. Thurairajah spoke of his plans to invite Korean contractors to build the university with a Sri Lankan army guard. But the rebels, the Tamil Tigers, were too strong in disrupting normal life to the Tamil population, the key strategy employed by most rebel groups. As the IPKF departed in March 1990 when the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers joined forces against it, the Tamil Tigers had a field day. A senior Professor of Civil Engineering, Prof. V. Navaratnarajah, a Jaffna Tamil working as a senior academic in Malaysia, was hired in September 1990 – although the war had resumed, the approval of the faculty and the cadre during the ceasefire allowed the university to still hire him to set up the Faculty working under Thurairajah. But there was no progress. Without progress all plans for the faculty were frozen. VC Thurairajah was frustrated and disappointed, and became increasingly nationalistic, going so far as to make fiery separatist speeches at Tamil Tiger festivities and asking the English Unit of the University of Jaffna to assign staff to work full-time for the rebels as translators. He died prematurely of leukemia in Oct. 1994 and posthumously received from the Tigers the highest title they had for a civilian.
When the University of Jaffna did not launch on the approved faculty and the pressure from all communities for increased admissions became unremitting, the next Engineering Faculty was given to University of Ruhuna in the deep Sinhala South in 1998. This writer was engaged for a period as the most senior person on site, planning the faculty with and under the Coordinator Dr. H.H.J. Keerthisena of Peradeniya. Jaffna was told that until this new faculty was on firm footing, Jaffna’s engineering Faculty was on hold. However, since the time this writer finished his contract at the rank of Professor at the new faculty at Ruhuna in 1999, that faculty to this date has been unable to attract a person at the rank of Professor or even Associate Professor. Even junior academics from Peradeniya offered the post of Dean, going so far as to violate the ordinances in making such an offer, could not be induced to move from positions at Peradeniya. (In the Sri Lankan university system, one with a PhD joins as Senior Lecturer and rises in that position until switched to the professorial track when there is a substantial accomplishment in research). Those at Ruhuna Engineering who did rise as Senior Lecturers and acquired the qualifications to be professor soon moved abroad or to established Faculties at Peradeniya or Moratuwa, which are also constantly looking for qualified staff as their own personnel flee abroad to greener pastures. It seemed then that Jaffna would have a prolonged wait.
REFERENCES
[1] Tennent, Sir James E., Ceylon: an account of the island physical, historical and topographical, with notices of its natural history, antiquities, and productions, Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, London, 1859.
[2] Ceylon Commission, Official Handbook of the Ceylon Court, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904.
[3] de Silva, C.R., “Weightage in University Admissions.” Mod. Ceylon Studies, Vol. 5 No.2, 1974, p.154, 1974
[4] Uswatte-Aratchi, G., “University Admission in Ceylon,” Mod. Asian Studies, Vol. 8 No.3, pp.301-304, 1974.
[5] Hoole, Rajan, Sri Lanka: the arrogance of power: myths, decadence & murder, University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna, 2001.
[6] Kalbag, Chaitanya, “The Tamil Tragedy,” India Today, 31 August, pp.14-23, 1983.
[7] ICES, 2012, http://www.ices.lk/sl_database/sri_lanka_facts.shtml
[8] University Grants Commission, National Plan for the University Sector in Sri Lanka, UGC, Colombo, 2004
[9] Cybermetrics, 2011, http://www.webometrics.info/rank_by_country.asp?country=lk
[10] Hoole, S.R.H., “Academic Freedom – Lessons from Sri Lanka,” Peace Review (Taylor and Francis), Special Issue on Academic Repression and Human Rights, Vol. 19, No. 4., pp. 507-520, Oct. 2007.
[11] Hoole, S.R.H., “Sri Lanka: Activism towards Peace and the Rule of Law through University Reform,” J.Peace Educ. (Taylor and Francis), in press
[12] de Lanerolle, K.M., and D. Calnaido, D., Report to the Council on Incidents at the University of Peradeniya, University of Peradeniya Council Papers, 1983.
To be continued......
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