| by Ranga Jayasuriya
( May 27, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) "We actually have only three real universities," quips a senior academic with an impeccable academic record. His pick of three universities are Moratuwa – which he says is the only Sri Lankan university that can be even remotely compared to an international university, Colombo (excluding some of the faculties) and the Business Faculty of the Sri Jayewardenepura University.
This correspondent is at a loss over whether that is an assessment overly harsh or too optimistic. If one is to peruse the world university rankings, our universities are nowhere among the top 1,000.
That is a sad indictment of local universities such as Peradeniya, which was modelled after Oxbridge tradition and held so much potential at its outset. That is worse when some industrious start up universities in countries like Singapore, which perhaps has the most outward looking and ambitious higher education policy in the world, and China, where the government is increasingly keen on branding of its universities, have moved forward.
The student turmoil and prolonged closures, which our universities had been subjected to in the '80s are not an excuse for its poor showing at present. Nanyang Technological University of Singapore was in fact shut for decades, until 1991, in order to wade off Chinese communism. Within two decades since it was reopened, NTU is now ranked among the world's top 50 universities and top 20 business schools. And its graduate school of International Studies, which was set up in 2007, is ranked among the top International Studies think-tanks in Asia. As an alumnus, this correspondent could vouch that its world ranking is reflected in the quality of its teaching.
Why has Sri Lanka failed while places like Singapore had succeeded, needs to be examined in-depth by educationists.
On this count, the common argument, the resource dearth, in terms of physical assets in local universities does not hold much water. While this correspondent had been not so fortunate and the local university he attended had been crippled with lack of facilities, his observation of much of the elite local universities such as Peradeniya, Moratuwa and Colombo, is that they are quite well-equipped with resources and State funding, pretty much akin to their Singaporean counterparts.
The insular approach
Their problem lies, not so much with the State funding, but with the overall insular approach of those universities.
That alone prevents Peradeniya from emulating the success of NTU, let alone Oxford and Cambridge it was modelled after. With their antiquated and insular thinking, local universities continue to fail their students. Of course, some of its best products end up in the Tier One British and American Universities and achieve academic and professional acclaim. But, that has much to do with individual brilliance than that of the institution.
Sri Lankan universities admit the cream de la cream of the country's students, and after three or four long years, they churn out a bunch of half-baked sub-standard graduates. Granted, that everyone of those passing out of the intakes, would have some exceptional minds, who would go to Ivy League or Russel Group universities, while local universities would spend hours telling how great their achievements had been, and opting to ignore the peril it inflicted on the preponderance of its students. That scenario applied to my batch of students, many of whom spent years of post-graduation on the road, demanding State jobs.
Perhaps one of those industrious researcher's should compare the IQ levels and problem-solving skills of new entrants to our universities with their international counterparts, and thereafter, proceed to compare the outcome the two education systems would have on the two groups at the end of their degree courses. The Sri Lankan situation would reveal the disparity between the potential it held at the outset and how little of it has been achieved. If you look for more attributes, with the help qualitative research, our researcher would be able to dissect the inflated egos of our passed-out graduates, notwithstanding low academic and professional achievement that their degrees entail.
Generous investments
The government is regularly being blamed for multiplicity of failures in our universities, ranging from resource dearth, politicization and privatization of free education. But, even the worst critics of successive Sri Lankan Governments, including this government, cannot deny the fact that post-independent Sri Lankan Governments have generously invested on human capital, including higher education. If there is any fault, that is they being ever too generous and that generosity had not been matched by a forward looking State policy on higher education.
Resources utilized without a vision is resources squandered. Successive Sri Lankan Governments have regularly failed to implement a coherent education policy. Policies they succeeded in implementing, such as the populist Swabasha education, were in fact regressive and denied the local universities their qualitative edge. Subsequent governments shied away from addressing drastic concerns, partly because militant student unions were ever willing to take to the streets at the drop of a hat.
It was because of the absence of a clear State policy, and not because the absence of State funding that Sri Lankan universities failed, while their Singaporean counterparts succeeded.
The State should lay out a coherent higher education policy. Given the social milieu of our students, and going by their reactions, such policies are more likely to be protested. If Sri Lankan universities are to succeed, it is mandatory that they be opened up for competition, including competition from their international counterparts. They have to be meritocratic and at least the successful universities would have to gradually downsize the intakes, which amount to over 40%, and taken on affirmative action known as district quotas. They will surely have to downsize their vernacular language degree programmes, which have resulted in multiplying mediocrity.
They will have to hire academic staff from a much broader cross-section, including the private sector and proactively send off its academia, which is largely sub-standard to Tier One world universities for doctoral studies. And they should make use of opportunities of academic exchanges and get down world class academics to teach in local universities.
They will have to entice talented international students to study in local universities with generous scholarships. Those students would one day become grassroots ambassadors for their universities.
Sri Lankan universities have offered five per cent of places for fee-levying international students. Those slots have not been utilized for obvious reason, that is the fees that have been charged by the local universities are too extravagant. An industrious student would rather opt for a better known Australian university, instead of paying for education in a lesser known Sri Lankan university.
Sri Lanka will have to give away or heavily subsidize the tuition fees of international students should it want to create diversity in its student body and to reach out to the international market in terms of education.
Quantity over quality
Populist education policies in the country have favoured quantity over quality. And those thousands of students, who passed out from local universities have then joined the semi-skilled workforce. Sri Lanka should focus on quality, even if that means cutting down on numbers or stalling the further expansion of university intakes, which however, may be an unpopular decision.
Equally importantly, the rot in our universities is due to the absence of competition. The government should not only legalize private universities, but provide generous incentives for world-class universities to open up campuses in Sri Lanka. What we have right now, masquerading as private universities, are low-end polytechnics and colleges of questionable academic integrity.
However, putting in place a coherent education policy is far more complex than writing a column. One may wonder whether Sri Lanka has sufficient intellectual capital to lead such a process. Even countries like Singapore are still looking for foreign expertise to run their universities. NTU for instance hired renowned educationist Prof. Bertil Andersson.
There is a wealth of expertise that some of those countries can share with our policy-makers.
However, universities are ivory towers. And in this country, journalism is considered a job, not a profession. Why should the academia bother about the ramblings of a scribe. That thinking, though, sadly is symptomatic of the current rot in our education system.
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