Sunday, July 31, 2011
FUTA Refuse to Withdraw Letters of Resignation
by Janith Aranze
The academics who submitted their resignation letters over 3 months ago, decided to call off their trade union action last week and are still waiting for new letters of appointment from the Vice-Chancellors.
Spokesman for the FUTA, Dr. Mahim Mendis, has said that if the academics withdraw their resignation letters it will undermine the trade union action that was carried out over the last 3 months. “We cannot withdraw our resignation letters as we have been advised that it will undermine our trade union action.
The Vice-Chancellors have come together to make a decision not to make fresh appointments as they did not accept our resignations,” Mendis explained.
“The UGC is pressurizing the Vice-Chancellors not to make fresh appointments, it is our fundamental right to resign,” he said.
When The Sunday Leader contacted the University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman, Prof. S.V.D.G. Samaranayake, he denied the UGC was having any influence over the Vice-Chancellors’ decision. “We are not pressurising anybody, I know where you are getting these reports from but it is not true” he said.
Vice-Chancellor of Colombo University, Prof. Kshanika Hirimburegama, said that she hoped the matter will be resolved next week.
“Lectures are being conducted, and examinations are being processed, so hopefully the matter can be resolved quickly and on Monday we shall see,” she said.
UGC dissolves SE Uni Council two months before expiry
The South Eastern University Council has been dissolved by the University Grants Commission (UGC) two months prior to its expiry, amidst allegations that the move has helped cover up irregularities and malpractices.
A former council member M.M. Abul Kalam who was ousted, told the Sunday Times, “This sudden move by the UGC was consequent to a chain of events. At a COPE inquiry held last month in Parliament on the SEUSL, it was revealed that a recently appointed Council member had a conflict of interest related to procurement activities of the SEUSL”.
“We could not discuss matters raised at the COPE meeting, at the 139th Council meeting held on June 25. Hence, seven members of the Council jointly called for an emergency special meeting of the Council on June 27”, he said.
The Vice Chancellor (VC), by letter of June 29, refused to hold the scheduled meeting. “On June 30, we replied to the VC and stated that his refusal to accede to our request is a clear violation of the Universities Act. We are yet to receive a reply to this letter. Instead, all of us received letters signed by the UGC Chairman calling for our immediate resignation”, he said.
“We were shocked by this sudden decision of the UGC and the turn of events. We requested the UGC chairman to allow us to continue for the remaining two months to establish the corrective measures we took in the wake of the COPE exposure”, he said.
He said they met with Minister of Higher Education S.B. Dissnayake, and made representations.
UGC officials declined to comment on the issue
The world's top 100 universities ranked for the social science disciplines
Guardian, UK
Harvard ranks highest for accounting, economics and law according to world rankings for social sciences. Get the full QS rankings
• Get the data
• Get the QS biological sciences rankings
• Get the QS arts & humanities rankings
• Get the data
• Get the QS biological sciences rankings
• Get the QS arts & humanities rankings
The Harvard law school area on the campus of Harvard University has been ranked as the top place in the world to study law. Photograph: Chitose Suzuki/AP
It is another strong appearance for the American university which earlier this year topped rankings for biological sciences and for world reputation.
Stanford university come in top place for statistics and operational research, beating Harvard. The rankings show the best performers in the six disciplines; accounting and finance, economics and econometrics, law, politics and international studies, sociology and statistics and operational research. The Oxbridge universities are in the top ten for each subject.
London School of Economics (LSE) beat both Oxford and Cambridge universities for economics and econometrics in the rankings published by leading higher education and careers research company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). LSE are also placed ahead of University College London (UCL) for all of the disciplines.
The social sciences rankings are good news for UK universities with Oxford and Cambridge featuring heavily in the top ten for all the disciplines. Oxford university beats Cambridge at accounting and finance, economics, law and politics and international studies but comes in two places lower for statistics and operational research.
As part of the survey to compile the rankings, global graduate employers were asked to identify the universities they believe produce the best graduates overall and within a selected discipline. The results showed that graduates in business, accountancy and finance, and economics were the most sought after.
With the continuing focus on universities to bring value to the education market along with their increasing fees, graduate employability has become a growing worry for future students.
"Employability is by no means the only benefit of a university education, but with £9,000 per-year fees and 83 graduates now competing for every job, it is inevitably at the forefront of many prospective students' minds", says John O'Leary, Editor of the Times Good University Guide and member of the QS Academic Advisory Board. "The reality is that students will be paying the same amount for degrees that in practice have vastly different market values."
We have compiled these rankings and all the QS rankings so far into a spreadsheet which can be downloaded below. The university rankings feature country they are in and show the full 100 listed. Below is a table showing the top 10 in all six social sciences disciplines by subject.
Data summary
Education : My child is better than yours
Times Online
| Thanks to some serious policy bungling in the UK, higher education is all the rage at the moment. As this column has pointed out time and again, higher education and health care are the two exceptions to the rational demand theory. Both are driven by emotional factors and some investments in higher education are now taking the shape of an asset bubble. While a misguided choice architecture has now forced the British Government to revise their higher education fee schedule, the sector holds broader concerns for the future. There is a serious mismatch between demands for certain skills by industry and supply by universities. There is a global glut of entry-level Accountants, alongside Business and Arts graduates. The employment landscape has shifted dramatically with a dispersion of demand coming from skilled technical and engineering jobs (in the mining and manufacturing sectors as an example, which do not require a university education) and highly skilled engineering professions within electrical and civil disciplines. Scientists (both life and physical) are perhaps the most important graduates in society who go unrewarded. The global glut of non-technical graduates (for the lack of a better word to group these individuals) has seen a dramatic plunge in starting salaries in real terms for most white collar professions. When coupled with increasing tuition, higher education beyond a handful of global universities, is looking extremely unattractive at the moment. Most graduates over the last two years are either unemployed or “under” employed according to statistics provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This is felt even in Australia, which by most measures is the best performing advanced economy in the world. Surveys show 30% unemployment amongst all graduates, while a further 35% report being underemployed. This result is attributed to the patch-work Australian economy, where non mining related companies are struggling to keep their businesses open. Glut When a glut of highly indebted graduates with the wrong kinds of skills is unleashed on a struggling world economy, the results aren’t pretty. The solution to this problem won’t come from the higher education sector on count of the perverse incentive structures in place for these providers. A recent study in Australia showed that a handful of the most popular courses by international students drove most of the profit and cross subsidises the entire university system. These courses were management, business studies (commerce) and information technology. The most popular courses (read: profitable for providers) are becoming inversely correlated with job opportunities, and offer decreasing benefits to society. If the state of higher education was not bad enough, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in their latest assessments of secondary schools points to an increasingly widening gap between regional performances within countries. While Sri Lanka and India are not part of the study, a similar study was conducted in India where the results showed a stark dispersion in results for mathematics. According to the study, more than half of Indian school children are functionally illiterate and innumerate. While a similar study in Sri Lanka would be most revealing, it wouldn’t be too dissimilar given the discrepancies of teaching and facilities between the provinces. One count on which it would be different is the far superior access and equitability in the primary and secondary school systems available to Sri Lankan citizens, when compared to India. The low average level of educational achievement in India may come as a surprise. In the U.S., the median income of households headed by an Indian-American was $83,000 in 2007, well above that of East Asians ($61,000), and non-Hispanic whites ($55,000). And despite comprising less than 1% of the population, 8% of physicians and surgeons in the U.S. are Indian-American. While excellent higher education has made a strong contribution to India, poor policy in primary and secondary education presents a major policy challenge. The challenge for Sri Lanka is the reverse. The foundations of primary and secondary education have been strong thanks to the “Kannangara” revolution of the fifties. But support for quality higher education has been far less convincing Parents Parents faced with this unappealing mix of options have increasingly tended to opt for overseas migration as an alternative solution. But the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test holds some major disappointment for would be migrants. The performance of students who were born overseas (first generation migrants) tends to be worse than locals, and more worryingly those trends persists well in to the second generation. Singapore and UAE are the only exceptions, given the transient nature of most migrants to both countries. Australia is an anomaly given the large transitory East Asian population. Overseas migration has the potential to lead to unintended consequences and leave families worse-off. The Sri Lankan government has a duty and citizens have a right to demand better access to quality higher education. Part of that solution may lie in abolishing free higher education. Taxpayers should not be funding the betterment of a handful of individuals, who by and large may not contribute to the betterment of the country or her people. This is no different to bribing public officials or politicians. Instead a need-based scholarship system and inflation adjusted student loans remain the best way forward. The pettiness displayed by the government towards academics is farcical. These are the handful of individuals who have returned to the country to contribute, when they had far more attractive financial options. Most others have not had the courage of their convictions nor see the need to contribute to the system that created them. This is simply the reason why higher education needs a price. Meanwhile, most parents have made higher education into a bigger concern – and by extension a bigger problem – than it needs to be. As highlighted in these columns previously, higher pay associated with higher education is becoming less evident, beyond a certain threshold which is in decline. Some people are better off going straight to work, than spending four years in a university, especially if the said discipline has very low thresholds to entry. The most prudent higher education strategy comes down to the individual capabilities of a child, where some successful outcomes may lie in unstructured disciplines without any higher education. Sportsmen and women along with those in creative arts are the two most obvious examples. Doing the right thing Part of a successful higher education strategy is also a financial strategy on behalf of the child, where unconventional disciplines require a financial plan for the child that would see them for the first 10 years of their adult life. Contrary to popula assumption amongst most parents, successful higher education has nothing to do with how better your child is compared to someone else’s. Instead, it’s about doing the right thing for your child, based on their ability and intrinsic motivations. Having some help from the government, at a price, would be most helpful. (Kajanga is an Investment Specialist based in Sydney, Australia. You can write to him at kajangak@gmail.com). |
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