Friday, July 29, 2011

VCs, lecturers split hairs, while varsities remain paralysed


The Island 29/07/2011


by Dasun Edirisinghe

Vice Chancellors of universities, who met yesterday at the Open University, Nawala, decided to request university lecturers "to resume duties in the posts they held prior to their strike action." This decision was taken to ensure restoration of normalcy in the universities, Chairman of the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Directors (CVCD) Prof K. A. Nandasena told ‘The Island’.

The meeting was summoned to find ways to end the impasse that had been caused by a decision taken by the vice chancellors of the universities not to issue fresh letters re-appointing university lecturers to the voluntary posts from which they had resigned as part of their trade union action, he said.

The CVCD, at the end of the meeting issued a letter commending the decision of the Federation of the University Teachers’ Associations to suspend their trade union action. "Since the university councils which are the appointing authorities have not accepted the letters of resignation of Heads of Department submitted at the commencement of the trade union action on May 09, 2011, the CVCD is of the view that the necessity to re-appoint Heads of Departments does not arise. To ensure the normalcy in the universities, the CVCD requests all academics who were on trade union action to resume duties in the posts they held prior to trade union action," the letter said.

President of the Federation of University Teachers Associations (FUTA) Dr Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri told ‘The Island’ that they too have been sent a copy of the letter. However, the letter had two contradictory points which the academics have to consider seriously before deciding their future course of action, he said. "The letter by the CVCD commending the suspension of trade union action accepts that we had engaged in such an action. The trade union action was the resigning from the posts of heads of departments. In the meantime it says there was no necessity of issuing letters of reappointment. These two contradictions could not be ignored," he said.

Dr Devasiri said that the executive committee of the FUTA would meet this evening (29) to discuss the contents of the letter from the CVCD and decide the future course of action.

Do we need state universities?

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.
  • Milton Friedman, Friedman, Milton & Rose D. Capitalism and Freedom, University of Chicago Press, 1982
Learning from success stories
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

An academic spring in Sri Lanka?

Island



By Camena Guneratne and Harini Amarasuriya
Open University of Sri Lanka

Continued From Thursday

Part II

Feudal character

Even a cursory analysis of Sri Lankan society reveals its deeply engrained feudal character. Despite 60 years of independence and democracy, as a society, we still remain largely dependent on feudal relationships to negotiate our everyday life. Knowing the right person, having the right connections, establishing the necessary patronage linkages is what helps us get through life fairly comfortably. Those who do not have access to those links will be left behind. This has become so much a part of our lives that we are unconscious of it. Of course, networking and building the right social connections in order to get by in life is not something that is unique to the Sri Lankan culture. Networking and relationship building form the core subject of many self improvement and professional development courses. But there is something unique about the insidiousness of the need to ‘know’ the right people and to be part of the right social or political networks in Sri Lanka, which deserves some thought. And that is the particularly feudal character of these networks and alliances. This means that establishing and maintaining these relationships include unquestioning and uncritical loyalty and obedience. Whether this is based on respect for age, authority, status, position or even friendship, these networks and social connections are highly personalised and form close, incestuous circles. The networks that exist within the universities are also based on similar relationships of patronage. Most of us working within the Sri Lankan university system are only too aware of this. While we want to ensure that we retain the best and the brightest of our graduates within the university system, this also reinforces relationships of dependence and patronage that stifles creativity, independence and that most important quality of all, autonomy. The teacher-student relationship survives far longer than necessary within Sri Lankan universities. Relationships between colleagues are mediated by the desire to please the powerful and to be aligned with the influential. Intellectual exchanges are circumscribed by the need to respect hierarchy and the fear of the consequences if you don’t; which ideas get challenged by whom depends on the guru kula you belong to rather than the legitimacy or importance of the thought. In recent times this cycle of networking and patronage becomes more ominous when it links the university system to the political sphere. This is unfortunately evident in the appointments of those holding high office in universities and related institutions.

These are perhaps some of the reasons the giant was sleeping and the academic community was in exile. The gradual erosion of academic freedom and independent thought led to situations where maintaining a low profile and not stirring up trouble became the main preoccupation of university teachers. This translated into apathy in the face of sometimes outrageous abuses of power by those in authority. In the past year or so we have seen a Vice Chancellor sending female students for virginity testing, another banning a human rights activist from speaking at a function of the university (which incidentally is a public space), yet another acquiescing in the illegal appointment of a Dean who had retired from service (the same Dean who now claims to derive his intellectual inspiration from supernatural forces), university Senates awarding honourary doctorates to politicians bypassing correct procedures. All this without a murmur of protest from the academic community at large! And we ask ourselves, "why?" Perhaps, another reason is that for many years, younger academics didn’t have role models to show them what it meant to be a part of a vibrant, energetic and intellectually stimulating environment. Those of us in the senior ranks, too, failed to adequately mentor the juniors and lead by example. Many of us were advised not to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves; to be discreet; to turn the other way if we see something wrong. If this was what was expected of us within the universities, how could we draw attention to ourselves outside?

Giant asleep, not dead

But, what this current resurgence has shown is that although the giant was asleep it is not dead. The impulses that led us to seek employment and a career within academia were clearly not economic. We all walked into the university system with our eyes wide open as to what our economic condition would be. Most of us took the plunge because we hold on to an ideal of university life where ideas matter; independence and critical skills are valued, not feared. We have listened wistfully to stories of the past of fiery debates and arguments in senates and faculty boards, of brilliant and colourful personalities stalking our corridors, of their intellectual achievements and eccentric exploits. These legends also inspired us to choose this career path. We chose academic careers because we believed in a certain way of life, a certain form of engagement with the world. Over the years what we got was under-funded and under-resourced institutions coming under increasing political control by governments to whom education was no longer a priority. Given their environment, combined with the impossibly low salaries offered, the universities no longer attracted the best minds and inevitably took a turn towards mediocrity and apathy. And with a few exceptions and while trying to maintain some standards of excellence, most of us went with the tide!

We are all responsible for the current state of the university system in Sri Lanka. But, in spite of our frustration, lurking inside all of us was the hope for something different. And it is that hope which is being stirred today. Within the last couple of months, leaders have emerged from all sides from within the different universities. Academics are beginning to show that they will no longer be silent. Academics are taking on authorities who are attempting to circumvent university procedures, influence academic decisions and interfere with teaching responsibilities. They are also supporting each other. The public protests in which university teachers marched on the streets in the past few weeks (a phenomenon unthinkable a year ago), their willingness to travel literally from one end of the country to the other to support their colleagues and the sense of solidarity and community this has generated have triggered a new found feeling of liberation. The last rally took place in Jaffna, where close to 1,000 university teachers from all parts of the country marched on the streets much to the bemusement of the local people. At that meeting a question asked by a union leader summed up in one sentence all our past failings – "Where was FUTA in thirty years of civil war?"Now academics are resisting when VCs and Deans go beyond their authority. We are finally learning that that is not the way; that we have to stand up to be counted; that VCs are also accountable to their institutions and their impunity must be challenged; that senate and faculty board meetings are not just held to rubber stamp decisions made by others, but are forums where matters are debated and decisions taken by a responsible community of people.

What next?

This is not the first (and will not be the last) regime to use political power to interfere with the autonomy of universities. But safeguarding that autonomy requires academics to take their rights and privileges seriously and to fight to protect it. We reiterate that these rights and privileges are intrinsic to our ability and our obligations to fulfil our core functions in civil society. It is important that we do not forget that this fight has to happen within as much as outside the universities. As the UNESCO Lima Declaration on Academic Freedom and Autonomy of Institutions of Higher Education says, university autonomy is what enables the academic community to speak out with responsibility and independence on the ethical, cultural and social problems of their time. The current FUTA trade union action has enabled us to reflect on and act on these issues both inside and outside our institutions. The trade union action being suspended does not mean that our fight to protect our privileges and fulfil our responsibilities need come to an end. It is up to us to also hold FUTA accountable for the challenge they laid before university teachers at the seminar in Jaffna when one speaker asked us what we were going to do when our wallets and handbags were filled. The trade union action has been suspended even prior to our wallets and handbags being filled; perhaps our union leaders who have been exhorting us to keep fighting need to explain why they gave up the fight long before we were ready to do so.

The current mood of the academic community shows that it was not merely the salary issue which drew us on to the streets. The intransigence and inanity of the current regime and the humiliating treatment meted out to university teachers has had a positive effect. It has, without doubt been a significant factor in causing them to finally rise up and say enough is enough. You can push a community so far and no further. Perhaps, a more significant factor is the threat to the very future and survival of the country’s much cherished public education system. University teachers are now making it clear that they will not stand silent and watch the dismantling of this system. The demand for decent salaries is based not merely on self interest but also on real fears that the erosion of adequate funding is an insidious way of destroying these institutions from within. FUTA is also asking for adequate funding of education as a whole which is a sine qua non for sustainable development.

There are signs that the winter of our discontent is ending and spring is in the air. The response of university teachers to the FUTA union action signalled that we were ready to be mobilised and to emerge from hibernation. Now that the union action has been suspended, the next few weeks and months will demonstrate if the signs of resurgence are here to stay.

Concluded

What is the scientific process?

The Island



article_image
By Carlo Fonseka

Like all living things on earth, we humans (members of the species Homo sapiens) strive to survive and to reproduce ourselves in this world. Not knowing whence we came, whither we are hurrying or why, we find ourselves engaged in trying to avoid suffering and pursuing happiness. To succeed in this endeavour we have to interact with our environment. The brain is the organ that mediates our interactions with the world. The brain is equipped with the capacity to perceive and judge what happens in the world from a causal perspective, that is to say, to judge the way in which one thing gives rise to, or causes another. Our endeavours to avoid suffering and to pursue happiness will succeed only to the extent that the judgments we make with our brain about cause and effect relationships are true, correct and accurate. i.e. reliable.

Empirical Approach

Our judgments are based on our perceptions which themselves depend on what the world appears to be to our sense organs such as our eyes and ears. We have learnt from experience that our eyes and ears do not always give us reliable information about the world. Because of the fallibility of our senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch) experience has taught us that our judgments based on perceptions must be validated by the exercise of our critical intelligence i.e. our faculty of reason. By this method –sensory experience guided by rational analysis – humanity has acquired knowledge about the world which has helped us to avoid premature death, to reduce suffering and to enjoy the experience of living in the world. A little thought suffices to a show that wherever and whenever human beings have acquired reliable knowledge about some aspect of the natural world, they had, first of all, made some observations about it. Next, they had figured out some cause-and-effect explanation for the observations. Finally, they had looked to see whether the explanation is confirmed by their experience of living. If the validity of the explanation is repeatedly confirmed on many occasions in one or more ways, the explanation (hypothesis) comes to assume the status of ‘a theory’. Thus what began with observation and was confirmed by further observation ended as a theory. Theories embody our knowledge of the world based on the facts of our experience. We may call this the empirical approach to the nature of the world. It is the essential scientific process. There may be other approaches to knowledge such as divine revelation as in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. However, the empirical, logical, rational process is the one that has given humankind the most reliable knowledge about the world which has enabled us to prevent premature death, eliminate avoidable suffering and enjoy life on earth.

It was Karl Popper who pointed out that all theories are equally conjectural because for any finite set of observations there can be an infinite number of explanatory theories. Therefore mathematically the probability of any one of them being ‘true’ is zero. Although scientific theories are not wholly true and may even be false, the scientific process itself is rational because scientific theories can be improved in the light of further empirical evidence. In practice if not in theory many people who freely use computers, televisions and airplanes regard the scientific process as the most effective and reliable method available to humankind to acquire knowledge about the world in which we have to live and die.

RCKD

Let us now apply the above considerations to the problem of the Rajarata Chronic Kidney Disease (RCKD) of unknown cause. If newspaper reports are correct, the Kelaniya Group of Scientists led by Prof. Nalin de Silva claim to have figured out that the cause of RCKD is arsenic. As I understand it, to make their important claim acceptable to those who regard empirical natural science as I have described it above, three conditions have to be fulfiled. They are the necessary and sufficient conditions that must be fulfiled before their claim that they KNOW that arsenic is indeed the cause of RCKD becomes scientifically valid.

First: Arsenic must really be the cause of RCKD

Second: They must be sure that arsenic is the cause of RCKD

Third: They must have the right to be sure that arsenic is the cause of RCKD

As they believe, arsenic may indeed be the cause of RCKD. But their belief by itself is not enough to validate their claim that they know it is the cause. A second condition must be satisfied before their belief can aspire towards the status of knowledge. Why so? Because had they just guessed from a sense of inner conviction with or without divine help that arsenic is the cause of RCKD and their guess turns out to be correct, they cannot validly claim that they had true knowledge of it. For them to claim to have had knowledge of it, they had to be sure of it on the basis of some verifiable evidence, such as having observed arsenic in samples of water and rice. Even their subjective certainty, however, though necessary, in not sufficient for them to validly claim that they know that arsenic is the cause of RCKD. Why not? Because their sureness or certainty may be based on circumstances that do not entitle them to be sure. For one thing, being human beings like the rest of us, they are liable like the rest of us not only to err, but are also susceptible to illusions, hallucinations and delusions. So their subjective certainty may be based on un-checkable, unverifiable evidence. Therefore it is necessary for them to satisfy the third condition before their claim to knowledge becomes a valid one and that is the right to be sure of the reliability of the evidence.

Conclusion

To sum up: in order to claim that they know that arsenic is the cause of RCKD acceptable to the modern scientific outlook, not only must their belief that arsenic is the cause of RCKD be true; they must also be sure that it is true; and most importantly they must have the right to be sure that it is true. In the modern scientific process the right to be sure is earned in various ways, depending on the matter in question. In the case of RCKD, the essential validation of their claim to knowledge that arsenic is the cause of RCKD is that the reliability of their methodology and accuracy of their observations on which their claim is based should be capable of being verified by competent others. i.e. publicly verified. Why should that be so? Because what is not verifiable by others will become a matter of disagreement and whenever there is unsettleable disagreement, we reach a dead end. This may lead to a fight to the death based on different epistemological approaches to reality which should be avoided in the name of humanity. If the matter is a trivial one like fire-walking or hanging on hooks, the disagreeing parties can agree to disagree and go their separate ways. However if the matter in question has public policy implications, publicly uncheckable ‘truths’ are potentially dangerous. For even matters which are on the edge of private lunacy, can become matters on the edge of public policy.