Higher Education Problem and its Context

| by Dr. Siri Gamage

( September 19, 2012, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) As neoliberal market forces have expanded into the education field, there are numerous educational providers around the world professing to provide a world-class education to those who can afford to pay. These providers have developed marketing and other mechanisms to cross national and regional boundaries in order to engage with prospective students and their sponsors. State controlled universities in some countries – developed and developing - have also followed in this example and opened up their institutions to the wider world, by way of various partnership agreements with foreign universities and selective offering of specific courses to foreign students who are willing to pay fees. This has created a challenge for the rest of the universities that are not yet involved in providing fee paying education on moral, institutional, political or capacity grounds. Yet the latter group of universities and their leaders are constantly grappling with the idea and merits of fee paying education vs. free education as the media exposure to the former type has become significantly more focused compared to what the universities that continue to provide a traditional kind of free education can come up with as their reason for existence. In essence the world over a diversity of higher education provision has become the common feature challenging orthodox hierarchies that existed during the elitist higher education provision to a privileged few. Sri Lanka’s ‘higher education problem is to be seen in this broader context, even though it has its own home grown history, characteristics, conflicts, decline and now crisis.

In the recent decades, the private sector has expanded significantly in the country, embracing non-traditional spheres of activity in the process. We know how the expanding communication technologies provided scope for hundreds and thousands of small operators to set up so-called ‘communication centres’. The same applied to private bus operations when the monopoly occupied by LANGAMA, the state owned Transport Corporation, was broken by the import of private buses since the liberalisation of the economy in the late 70s. In recent times, Chinese restaurants have been mushrooming around the island. Establishment of textile manufacturing factories with state sponsorship and support was another arena of private sector activity at a larger scale connecting with the global market. For a few decades, creative export development activities of various entrepreneurs have been the hallmark of Sri Lanka’s relative economic success. There are other examples of how Sri Lankans with entrepreneurial skills, desire and know how have ventured into non-traditional arenas of activity to invest, engage, expand, and make a profit while providing employment to themselves and others. Education has become the newest arena for such activity. Medical tourism can be another in time to come. The difference in education as an entrepreneurial activity is that both developed and developing countries are now competing for potential student markets in various regions, and some countries are well advanced in terms of their track record, marketing prowess, investments, networks of agents etc. compared to most countries in the Asian region. European and American universities have a natural advantage in comparison to universities in the Asian region who tend to enter the game lately due to the material bases, cultural constructions and psychological images that have been formulated over several centuries during and after colonisation. Imitative attitudes and behaviour of the former by the latter is of no help in contemplating a competitive entry.

In this context, particularly when compared to other countries in the region, Sri Lanka cannot afford to disenfranchise one sector over another when it comes to higher education provision in to the future. Both sectors,private and public, can have legitimate missions, visions, strategies and expected outcomes deriving from different sources e.g. one from the free market principle of individual choice and the other from equity and social justice considerations commonly known as ‘free education’. While each can have criticisms of the other in terms of quality and content of education being provided, fee or free basis, etc. it is important to realise that both sectors are there to stay in the short to medium term. The difference is that the private sector has been opened up for competitive marketing and recruitment of students whereas the state sector has been largely a regulated and closed one. How far the state sector can remain this way without changing with the times and needs of the population is a pertinent question. If the sector has to change, on what parameters should this be so? Should they follow the private sector providers who come from foreign countries and opened up fee-paying education? Should they be open to competition even among state sector universities? Should they be provided with government funding on a 100% basis?

There is no question about the need for reforms in the state university sector to keep up with the times and trends around us. But what form should such reform be implemented is the critical issue. This cannot be determined without careful consideration of many factors including the funding model, basis of free education provision, regional imbalances, subject categories, faculty and university management process and leadership, teaching pedagogies, employment market conditions and needs, ingredients of developing an empowered Sri Lankan student with necessary personality traits, knowledge and skills. In terms of funding, the question about the payment of full or partial fees by those who can afford to pay need to be considered. In other words, some debate and discussion ought to occur as to whether all students, irrespective of their family incomes, should be provided with free education? The level of funding compared to GNP shall also be considered.

One of the characteristics of state funded universities in the developed world, who have seen enormous expansion and growth, is that they do not receive 100% funding from the state as in Sri Lanka. What they receive is partial funding around plus or minus 50%. University funding is determined on the basis of a given figure for each student recruited by a university. On the top of this, universities can compete for special funding for various tasks such as infrastructure, recruitment of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, quality enhancement of courses, or research. Universities are also permitted to enrol fee-paying students from overseas to supplement their income. Teams of researchers engage in collaborative research by using university infrastructure for which the researchers have to pay a sum of money to the University from the external research grant. A similar process applies to consultancy income by the academic and research staff. This arrangement has compelled state funded universities to develop competitive programmes of teaching and research by entering into numerous partnerships with domestic and international providers of higher and technical education. In the Australian case, university leaders have moved to establish research networks cutting across institutional boundaries. Cross institution credits are offered to students who study at more than one institution. Specific courses are developed and offered by two or three universities allowing students to take specific course units from more than one institution. One can add lecturer mobility also to this trend like in Japan for example. Thus the higher education providers both in the state sector have identified funding issues within their own organisations and looked for creative solutions outside their own patch while reforming their institutions internally on a regular basis to achieve efficiencies.

The institutional make up of Sri Lankan higher education institutions in the state funded sector has to undergo a radical change if they are to address local needs in the 21st century. The nature of university administration, teaching styles, student accomplishment, library resources, especially electronically based data bases and resources, course content and architecture all have to be reviewed periodically with the involvement of external stakeholders. Competition needs to be introduced to the system so that the institutions are compelled to look outside their predetermined boxes and move beyond inward looking attitude. In a competitive world, the product offered and its quality matters very much. Non-performing courses need to be deleted and those with a demand in society and elsewhere need to be introduced. Student satisfaction needs to be ascertained on a semester basis. Discipline based offerings are to be complemented with interdisciplinary offerings in newer subject areas. Institutional leaders who produce results are to be rewarded.

All this cannot be achieved without a formal state - led process of review and re-consideration to develop a national vision and mission for higher education which takes into account the diversities and complexities in the society and region in terms of private and state sector education provision. A process that does not try to delegitimise one over the other but attempt to comprehend the complementarities and innovations that can be achieved together while supporting less advantaged segments of students by way of free education along with a better product useable by the student and his/her employers in the state, private or NGO sectors. Multiple language proficiencies coupled with professional competencies and critical thinking skills should be essential parts of this.