By Chanuka Wattegama
The term ‘Free-Education’ is a misnomer. Its Sinhala equivalent ‘Nidhahas Adhyaapanaya’ is far misleading. Exempted from payment is just one meaning of the adjective ‘free’, often given towards the end of a dictionary entry. A more discernible meaning is the freedom of choice, ironically a feature largely missing in our education system.
Ideally, it should be called ‘Enforced Education’, for its inability to offer choices (Does your offspring study at the school of your choice?) or ‘Limited Education’ for deterring educational opportunities for all (Only 16% qualifies from A/Ls enter universities.) or at least ‘Half-free Education’ (An average household expenditure on education is 4-5% of the total and over 75% even in the lowest income bracket attend private tuition classes.) So let us stop contributing to the joke. Face it. Our present education system is not egalitarian and certainly not free.
Monopoly
The present higher education system in Sri Lanka is a monopoly. The universities are owned, controlled and funded by the state. The bill for this so-called ‘free-lunch’ is settled by the tax payers. The state decides the number of graduates to be produced, depending upon the budgetary allocations it can make. The corollary is that it also blocks the rest. Outdoing qualifying level is no guarantee for university entrance. Theoretically, three ‘A’ passes or 95% in qualifying examination are good only if others do not perform better. Otherwise the dreams of university entrance are carted off, more often than not with a career of choice. An aspirant engineer, who loses the third opportunity to enter one of the three engineering faculties, has little choice. She/he should either change her/his career goals or head for foreign universities, if affordable. To call that a ‘Free Education System’, one should surely have a strange sense of humor.
The flaws of state only university model are wider. Lack of competition eradicates the incentives to produce quality graduates. Libraries with outdated books, computers with outdated software and lecturers with outdated knowledge hardly make the right academic environment. Lack of choice forces a large number of arts graduates to follow courses that makes them more unemployable. Graduate unemployment is a prominent fact. According to the Consumer Finance and Socio-Economic Survey in 2004 by Central Bank of Sri Lanka, unemployment was six times higher among the graduates than among those who had only primary education. One out of every eight local graduates was unemployed. When the state finally absorbed their rejected produce the market price was as low as LKR 6,000 per month, not too different from what an Office Assistant earns in the private sector.
The irony is with all these drawbacks, a school still strongly believes not only in state providing higher education, but doing so in a monopolistic environment. Does it make any sense?
Past model
Interestingly, this wasn’t the model that we followed in the past. The feudal education model was far efficient and productive. An academy as famous as Takshila, Vikramashila and Nalanda in the ancient Buddhist world, the Abhyagiriya University was said to have hosted 5,000 student monks in its hey days according to Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka to acquire Buddhist scriptures in fifth century AD. The complex would have been larger than any of the present Sri Lankan university premises and of the same size of the ancient Anuradhapura city centre. The cost of construction and maintenance couldn’t have come only from the government. No matter how pious the kings and the subjects were, they couldn’t have made such colossal allocations from the treasury for no return. The only modes of survival were by levying tuition fees or producing outcomes of not religious, but true economic value. Probably the institution did both. Unlike Theravada, Mahayana doctrine did not prevent monks from studying non-religious ‘lay’ subjects. So it is realistic to assume it operated independently without burdening the treasury.
The state run higher education system was introduced by the suddaas. University of Ceylon was established in 1942 by absorbing the Ceylon University Collage and Ceylon Medical Collage. The intake was limited (1,600 in 1948) and the competition was not high as the rich could afford foreign education. It made sense for the state to run a monopoly as the bulk of the graduates were directly absorbed to the state machinery. The state expenditure on education was an investment, not a burden.
The monopoly was natural even during the first four decades in the post-independence period. Subsidized higher education was perhaps the only option to create the number of graduates essential for medical, engineering and administrative services, in a country with a per capita GDP of sub USD 200 figures. Fee levying universities would not have been a viable solution.
Demand & supply forces
This is not the case now. Both demand and supply conditions have changed.
Demand first. The annual intake to universities has increased to 20,000 per year, but the demand, instead of sliding, is on the rise. This corresponds to the growth of expectations. It is not uncommon even for poor parents to plan for the higher education of their offspring. Sri Lanka too is no more a low income country. In spite of heavy burden of foreign loans, the per capita GDP has shown a tenfold increase since 1970s. A sizable section of population can now support the higher education of their children. If not selected for state universities now they either enter foreign universities or follow professional courses like CIMA. Popular medical faculties in Manipal in India and Chittagong in Bangladesh, inter alia, make Sri Lanka loses both foreign currency and business opportunities to provide similar or better services.
The local supply, despite the expansions, remains a serious mismatch to this increasing demand, both qualitatively (as discussed earlier) and quantitatively. My own A/L results, with just a credit pass for Pure Mathematics, in 1986, placed me 65th in the all island physical science stream with a seat at University of Moratuwa. One needs better performance to gain university entrance now. It is heartening to note the Minister of Higher Education sees the gap. We assume his attempts to bridge it are genuine. His possible success, unlike the numerous previous efforts to free higher education from state monopoly will be crucial in national development.
Need for role change?
Then the obvious question: Should state continue its present role in higher education? In the West, a popular argument by the proponents of non fee levying universities, is that the state is most efficient to deliver common goods (rival but not excludable) and were the public to bear the cost of higher education it would be, on average higher than what they pay in taxes. This may be true for populations, if they equally shoulder the burden of taxes. In countries where the intake is badly limited, we are back to square one. The state funded education is then only a subsidy from the entire population to a small selected group. (It is not necessarily from even rich to poor. Given the tax structure in Sri Lanka it could be possible for even the poor subsidizing the higher education of the rich. This is Victor Ivan’s argument, yet to be proven.) A different question is the justification of the selection of this ‘privileged’ group, but even if agreed on the principle, state universities are not necessarily the best mechanism to pass that subsidy. The poor can be offered a far better solution in the form of full and partial scholarships at non-state universities. This increases their choice and will not force them to give up their dreams if they do not reach cut off marks. Partial scholarships will create more opportunities particularly in the middle income category. As the progress of the scholarship holders are continuously monitored and the opportunities are treated more as a ‘privilege’ than a ‘right’, it also accompanies a productivity improvement.
Then, why push for state universities? Why bring arguments against a change in the system, just for the sake of argument? In short, why do we still fear the change?
Milton Friedman said the following in a different context, but the same theory is no less applicable to education.
There is no way to justify our present public monopoly of the post office. It may be argued that the carrying of mail is a technical monopoly and that a government monopoly is the least of evils. Along these lines, one could perhaps justify a government post office, but not the present law, which makes it illegal for anybody else to carry the mail. If the delivery of mail is a technical monopoly, no one else will be able to succeed in competition with the government. If it is not, there is no reason why the government should be engaged in it. The only way to find out is to leave other people free to enter.
Sri Lanka can of course learn from the success stories elsewhere. India, with its fee leaving university colleges started even before the formal economic liberalization process in 1992-3, is far ahead. In the field of engineering, IITs and NITs have started gradually losing their competitiveness to recently established fee levying institutions. The only feather still present in the cap of state universities is the pool of trained academics. Some professors of the old school have not left largely for emotional reasons. In most other aspects, the newbies can easily beat the oldies. India Today magazine of June 28, 2010 does its annual ranking for best colleges in India and not all the top 25s are state institutions. The state universities that appear top, does more for their long term reputations than resources. It is just a matter of time the level of resources would be the same. The competition for an IIT seat will soon reroute elsewhere. Given the choice, any student will select the institute that offers the certificate with the higher recognition in the job market. Whether it is run by the state or not, is no more important.
Conclusion
To wind up, let me take the last desperate trump of the state-university lovers. It was the state-universities, they say, that created the present workforce and made Sri Lanka stand proud among its South Asian neighbours by its achievements in education. Why not continue the same model?
The first part of this argument is partially correct. The state universities have produced some of the netas and almost all babus who run the nation today. (Interesting fact: Nearly 40% of our present cabinet ministers are either products of state universities or the law collage) Still that is a frail excuse not to introduce a more efficient system. The Abhayagiriya monastery too might have produced the scholars who immensely contributed to the economy and society of the day, but does anybody justify that model for the same reason?
We have been forced to stay within an outdated model for too long. It is the time to try and adopt better models. No excuses and certainly no delays please.
Chanuka Wattegama is an independent researcher in development policy and can be contacted atchanuka@gmail.com.
The term ‘Free-Education’ is a misnomer. Its Sinhala equivalent ‘Nidhahas Adhyaapanaya’ is far misleading. Exempted from payment is just one meaning of the adjective ‘free’, often given towards the end of a dictionary entry. A more discernible meaning is the freedom of choice, ironically a feature largely missing in our education system.
Ideally, it should be called ‘Enforced Education’, for its inability to offer choices (Does your offspring study at the school of your choice?) or ‘Limited Education’ for deterring educational opportunities for all (Only 16% qualifies from A/Ls enter universities.) or at least ‘Half-free Education’ (An average household expenditure on education is 4-5% of the total and over 75% even in the lowest income bracket attend private tuition classes.) So let us stop contributing to the joke. Face it. Our present education system is not egalitarian and certainly not free.
Monopoly
The present higher education system in Sri Lanka is a monopoly. The universities are owned, controlled and funded by the state. The bill for this so-called ‘free-lunch’ is settled by the tax payers. The state decides the number of graduates to be produced, depending upon the budgetary allocations it can make. The corollary is that it also blocks the rest. Outdoing qualifying level is no guarantee for university entrance. Theoretically, three ‘A’ passes or 95% in qualifying examination are good only if others do not perform better. Otherwise the dreams of university entrance are carted off, more often than not with a career of choice. An aspirant engineer, who loses the third opportunity to enter one of the three engineering faculties, has little choice. She/he should either change her/his career goals or head for foreign universities, if affordable. To call that a ‘Free Education System’, one should surely have a strange sense of humor.
The flaws of state only university model are wider. Lack of competition eradicates the incentives to produce quality graduates. Libraries with outdated books, computers with outdated software and lecturers with outdated knowledge hardly make the right academic environment. Lack of choice forces a large number of arts graduates to follow courses that makes them more unemployable. Graduate unemployment is a prominent fact. According to the Consumer Finance and Socio-Economic Survey in 2004 by Central Bank of Sri Lanka, unemployment was six times higher among the graduates than among those who had only primary education. One out of every eight local graduates was unemployed. When the state finally absorbed their rejected produce the market price was as low as LKR 6,000 per month, not too different from what an Office Assistant earns in the private sector.
The irony is with all these drawbacks, a school still strongly believes not only in state providing higher education, but doing so in a monopolistic environment. Does it make any sense?
Past model
Interestingly, this wasn’t the model that we followed in the past. The feudal education model was far efficient and productive. An academy as famous as Takshila, Vikramashila and Nalanda in the ancient Buddhist world, the Abhyagiriya University was said to have hosted 5,000 student monks in its hey days according to Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka to acquire Buddhist scriptures in fifth century AD. The complex would have been larger than any of the present Sri Lankan university premises and of the same size of the ancient Anuradhapura city centre. The cost of construction and maintenance couldn’t have come only from the government. No matter how pious the kings and the subjects were, they couldn’t have made such colossal allocations from the treasury for no return. The only modes of survival were by levying tuition fees or producing outcomes of not religious, but true economic value. Probably the institution did both. Unlike Theravada, Mahayana doctrine did not prevent monks from studying non-religious ‘lay’ subjects. So it is realistic to assume it operated independently without burdening the treasury.
The state run higher education system was introduced by the suddaas. University of Ceylon was established in 1942 by absorbing the Ceylon University Collage and Ceylon Medical Collage. The intake was limited (1,600 in 1948) and the competition was not high as the rich could afford foreign education. It made sense for the state to run a monopoly as the bulk of the graduates were directly absorbed to the state machinery. The state expenditure on education was an investment, not a burden.
The monopoly was natural even during the first four decades in the post-independence period. Subsidized higher education was perhaps the only option to create the number of graduates essential for medical, engineering and administrative services, in a country with a per capita GDP of sub USD 200 figures. Fee levying universities would not have been a viable solution.
Demand & supply forces
This is not the case now. Both demand and supply conditions have changed.
Demand first. The annual intake to universities has increased to 20,000 per year, but the demand, instead of sliding, is on the rise. This corresponds to the growth of expectations. It is not uncommon even for poor parents to plan for the higher education of their offspring. Sri Lanka too is no more a low income country. In spite of heavy burden of foreign loans, the per capita GDP has shown a tenfold increase since 1970s. A sizable section of population can now support the higher education of their children. If not selected for state universities now they either enter foreign universities or follow professional courses like CIMA. Popular medical faculties in Manipal in India and Chittagong in Bangladesh, inter alia, make Sri Lanka loses both foreign currency and business opportunities to provide similar or better services.
The local supply, despite the expansions, remains a serious mismatch to this increasing demand, both qualitatively (as discussed earlier) and quantitatively. My own A/L results, with just a credit pass for Pure Mathematics, in 1986, placed me 65th in the all island physical science stream with a seat at University of Moratuwa. One needs better performance to gain university entrance now. It is heartening to note the Minister of Higher Education sees the gap. We assume his attempts to bridge it are genuine. His possible success, unlike the numerous previous efforts to free higher education from state monopoly will be crucial in national development.
Need for role change?
Then the obvious question: Should state continue its present role in higher education? In the West, a popular argument by the proponents of non fee levying universities, is that the state is most efficient to deliver common goods (rival but not excludable) and were the public to bear the cost of higher education it would be, on average higher than what they pay in taxes. This may be true for populations, if they equally shoulder the burden of taxes. In countries where the intake is badly limited, we are back to square one. The state funded education is then only a subsidy from the entire population to a small selected group. (It is not necessarily from even rich to poor. Given the tax structure in Sri Lanka it could be possible for even the poor subsidizing the higher education of the rich. This is Victor Ivan’s argument, yet to be proven.) A different question is the justification of the selection of this ‘privileged’ group, but even if agreed on the principle, state universities are not necessarily the best mechanism to pass that subsidy. The poor can be offered a far better solution in the form of full and partial scholarships at non-state universities. This increases their choice and will not force them to give up their dreams if they do not reach cut off marks. Partial scholarships will create more opportunities particularly in the middle income category. As the progress of the scholarship holders are continuously monitored and the opportunities are treated more as a ‘privilege’ than a ‘right’, it also accompanies a productivity improvement.
Then, why push for state universities? Why bring arguments against a change in the system, just for the sake of argument? In short, why do we still fear the change?
Milton Friedman said the following in a different context, but the same theory is no less applicable to education.
There is no way to justify our present public monopoly of the post office. It may be argued that the carrying of mail is a technical monopoly and that a government monopoly is the least of evils. Along these lines, one could perhaps justify a government post office, but not the present law, which makes it illegal for anybody else to carry the mail. If the delivery of mail is a technical monopoly, no one else will be able to succeed in competition with the government. If it is not, there is no reason why the government should be engaged in it. The only way to find out is to leave other people free to enter.
- Milton Friedman, Friedman, Milton & Rose D. Capitalism and Freedom, University of Chicago Press, 1982
Sri Lanka can of course learn from the success stories elsewhere. India, with its fee leaving university colleges started even before the formal economic liberalization process in 1992-3, is far ahead. In the field of engineering, IITs and NITs have started gradually losing their competitiveness to recently established fee levying institutions. The only feather still present in the cap of state universities is the pool of trained academics. Some professors of the old school have not left largely for emotional reasons. In most other aspects, the newbies can easily beat the oldies. India Today magazine of June 28, 2010 does its annual ranking for best colleges in India and not all the top 25s are state institutions. The state universities that appear top, does more for their long term reputations than resources. It is just a matter of time the level of resources would be the same. The competition for an IIT seat will soon reroute elsewhere. Given the choice, any student will select the institute that offers the certificate with the higher recognition in the job market. Whether it is run by the state or not, is no more important.
Conclusion
To wind up, let me take the last desperate trump of the state-university lovers. It was the state-universities, they say, that created the present workforce and made Sri Lanka stand proud among its South Asian neighbours by its achievements in education. Why not continue the same model?
The first part of this argument is partially correct. The state universities have produced some of the netas and almost all babus who run the nation today. (Interesting fact: Nearly 40% of our present cabinet ministers are either products of state universities or the law collage) Still that is a frail excuse not to introduce a more efficient system. The Abhayagiriya monastery too might have produced the scholars who immensely contributed to the economy and society of the day, but does anybody justify that model for the same reason?
We have been forced to stay within an outdated model for too long. It is the time to try and adopt better models. No excuses and certainly no delays please.
Chanuka Wattegama is an independent researcher in development policy and can be contacted atchanuka@gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment