Wednesday, September 5, 2012


University dons: Emoluments and benefits

 ,The Island

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A large number of statements have been made and a great deal of information has been in the public domain recently re the adequacy or otherwise of the emoluments and other benefits enjoyed by University academic staff. FUTA and several others have pointed out that such emoluments are essential in order to attract persons with very high and mandatory PG qualifications to become Senior Lecturers and thereby reduce the current shortage of adequately qualified academics necessary for the large number of universities that exist today. Whatever, those benefits were or are, I am an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry who was patriotic enough to serve the University system in Sri Lanka for 43 years since graduation without ever even applying for any other job within or outside Sri Lanka, I therefore consider it my paramount duty and obligation to point out at least one very important and significant fact that, to my knowledge, has so far not been spotlighted by any party during the current trade union action of FUTA. I am bringing this to the notice of the Sri Lankan public since it is a very relevant fact which should not be overlooked and I am now able to point it out publicly since I will not benefit in any way by the current action as I retired 3 years ago at the mandatory age of retirement of 65 years.

We are all aware that a very large number of state officials and officers both in the public service as well as semi-government institutions (such as Corporations, Institutes, Authorities etc) have had, for many years , the government approved privilege of having an official vehicle permanently allotted to them personally with official drivers – a vehicle that is permitted to be used not only for official travel but also for a considerable amount of private /personal travel. The huge number of persons entitled to this benefit now includes not only Heads of Departments (including the overall Head who used to be referred to as the Director) but a whole array of others including Additional Secretaries of Ministries, Judges at various levels and in addition to the Directors General and Additional Director General of such institutions, a number of persons holding posts designated as Directors of sub-departments. To cite another example, in the Attorney General’s department, this includes a large numbers of Deputy Solicitors General, I wish to make it quite clear that I am not objecting to this practice since it is done with full government approval perhaps with the needs of such departments and institutions in mind and/or perhaps at the request of such bodies and relevant trade unions. The cost of this benefit can be easily assessed at a minimum monthly average lying between Rs 85,000 to Rs 140,000 per officer since it comprises the investment of an individual vehicle (equivalent monthly interest cost of Rs 35-55,000), driver’s salary (with allowances) apart from overtime of say another Rs 25,000 to 35,000 and fuel costs (Rs. 20- 60,000). This, no doubt, can very easily be seen to comprise an amount that is much more than the monthly salary of most if not all such officers.

On the other hand, in the University system only the Vice-Chancellor is entitled to this privilege for many years and no other academic , whether he be a Senior Professor or otherwise, can even dream of such a benefit unless he is close to the political high-ups and becomes a Vice-Chancellor! Therefore, it appears to be very unfair, if not cruel, to say that a University Professor gets a salary more than the Chief Justice. It is very regrettable that even the Minister of Higher Education, (who told Parliament two years ago that a professor should be paid Rs 200,000 per month) made such a statement recently and thereby tried to show that at present the University Professor gets a higher income than the Chief Justice. Leave alone the Chief Justice, the whole array of government officials of much lower status than the Chief Justice, whether in the judicial sphere or otherwise, get much more than a Professor’s income, at least indirectly through the personal vehicle allotted to him! Leave alone a vehicle for personal use, a university academic very often is unable to obtain even the very paltry vehicle loan that is permissible under UGC circulars! University academics also do not get housing or other benefits, which public servants quite often obtain.

I hope I have been able to correct grossly misleading statements made by politicians who should be more responsible to realise what they are talking about. It is very important that politicians as well as the public should realise that the Universities are having a huge recruitment and retention problem at the senior lecturer level and above and if immediate steps are not taken to redress this situation we will arrive at a state from which the tertiary educational sector will never ever be able to recover from.

Emeritus Prof. J N Oleap Fernando,

Emeritus Professor of Chemistry

The Open University of Sri Lanka

Are FUTA demands credible?

 , The Island

By Spectator  

What is the layman to make of the FUTA (Federation of University Teachers’ Associations) set of demands presented to the government relating to higher salaries for university dons and to wider policy on education? A strike of FUTA members has followed inconclusive negotiations with the government. A positive feature is the wide-ranging discussion and debate of the issues in the media following the strike. The public has benefited from the differing views expressed on the pros and cons of FUTA demands.

The morality of the strike action by FUTA, however, has surprisingly received scant attention. There can be little dispute that strike action of FUTA professionals, who belong to the top 5% of income earners in the country, is detrimental to the cream of youth studying at the 15 universities in the country. Disrupting education of youth for an unknown period surely presents a moral dilemma even in this materialistic age. Striking before exhausting all other options, including mobilizing collective trade union agitation on their demands and soliciting political support of the Opposition in Parliament, is perhaps not FUTA`s finest hour.

Trade Unions and Public Policy

Informed judgment on FUTA demands must be based on reason and evidence. FUTA and its supporters have not helped by the arguments put forward to underpin their demands.

One doubts that anyone challenges the right of FUTA, or for that matter any trade union, to make demands going beyond wages/salaries (and conditions of employment) to areas that are of an economic, social and political nature. However anyone would be hard pressed to subscribe to the view that governments must necessarily accede to individual or collective trade union demands on wider public policy and, in the case of FUTA accept demands related to fiscal policy to finance education because that is "what the society, the people, the citizens and the so-called stakeholders have to say".

It is common sense that the Government in its consideration of demands on matters of fiscal policy, such as those made by FUTA, take account, and safeguard, the interest of all stakeholders in society. That is what they are elected to do. Governments have the responsibility to be the arbiter of competing claims (e.g. education, health, defense) for the allocation of resources available to the Government. Moreover the allocations made are subject to Cabinet approval followed by parliamentary approval. The decision making processes of Government (where Treasury economists play a prominent role) balancing the interests of all stakeholders in society are far from being based on a colonial and neo-colonial attitude. It is the basis of budgetary policy of all countries and not specific to Sri Lanka.

Education spending of 6% of GDP annually

One of the central demands of FUTA is that the Government pledges to spend on education annually 6% of GDP compared to 1.86% currently on general education (2011). FUTA has argued that 6% of GDP is the figure that the Government committed itself in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) framework at UNESCO and that it should fulfill that pledge "in the next few years". FUTA has not felt it incumbent to justify this figure in any other way. Nor has it explained why it has taken upon itself to speak on behalf of all stakeholders on education without consulting let alone associating them.

The comments on the 6% of GDP demand of FUTA can be put succinctly.

(1) Few Governments have achieved the target of 6% of GDP on education spending. FUTA has given no comparative figures to buttress their case. Likewise no country has pledged to achieve the target "in the next few years" as FUTA demands from the Sri Lanka Government.

(2) High or low percentages of GDP on education spending is not the best yardstick to judge the quality of education in different countries. Japan and Singapore spend significantly less on education as a proportion of GDP than the USA and the United Kingdom. Education services and standards are deemed to be better in Japan and Singapore than in most developed countries that spend a higher percentage of GDP on education. China spends about the same percentage of GDP on education as Sri Lanka. It has had over 30 years of near or above 10% economic growth annually. What should be noted is that the low percentage of GDP spent on education in Sri Lanka in comparison with rich countries is partly explained by the variability of relative costs. Providing the same labour intensive basic educational services cost much more in rich countries than in Sri Lanka.

(3) FUTA gives no breakdown of how much is spent on universities and how much on government schools. Nor does it indicate the funding per pupil at universities and schools. One suspects it is hugely disproportionate in favour of university students and far wider than in other countries. Elitist concentration on high quality university education and relative negligence of school education, as in India (and perhaps in the United States at least for Afro-Americans), is not the best way forward to have a more democratic society. More money for all educational services is important but how it is spent is more important. FUTA stresses the former but has nothing to say on the latter except to demand higher salaries for university dons.

(4) Numerical targets such as 6% GDP education spending would have little value if achieved primarily by payment of higher salaries and emoluments (another central objective of FUTA for its members). There is no evidence to suggest that the quality of education would improve by salary inflation. That is the experience elsewhere, notably in the United Kingdom from 1997-2010. 

(5) FUTA is clear that it wants far more money (mind boggling figures of hundreds of billions of rupees) to be spent on education to achieve the 6% target. It is however unable or unwilling to work out what the Government would have to give up spending to accommodate its demand or how the money should be generated. The idea that it could be obtained by better collection of taxes is far too simplistic. If it was that easy it would have been done already for reasons other than increasing education spending.

(6) The clamour for 6% GDP a year for education spending may have consequences unintended by FUTA. The Government (with Official Opposition support) may encourage the private sector (including foreign institutions) to spend big money to establish private schools, universities and vocationally-oriented institutions in Sri Lanka; and set up a mechanism to regulate the establishments. The next logical step, as witnessed in many other countries when per capita incomes increase, is for the State to no longer consider education in state universities and state schools as a public good to be financed entirely by public funds. Instead public funds would be supplemented by the Government charging variable fees from students for different university courses ( e.g. higher fees for medicine, engineering and information technology courses that lead to higher earnings in employment) and, more generally, for all students (at universities and schools) with the impact mitigated by long-term, low interest loans or free education vouchers. National educational spending as a percentage of GDP could then rise towards the 6% target albeit in an unforeseen way.

(7) Supporters of the 6% of GDP on education spending need to bear in mind that while many of the claims of the benefits of education and skills may be true they apply to other sectors, notably to the health sector, for the same reasons as for education. The current inadequacies of state health services have left the country not well prepared for widely shared economic growth. Simple arithmetic would show that it is impossible to conceive of spending, primarily from Government resources, 6% of GDP on each of even two sectors, education and health.

The Government and FUTA may well come to a face-saving fudged compromise on the FUTA demands. Both sides are well advised, however, to collaborate closely, and in a meaningful way, to improve the educational and skill levels in the country in a cost effective manner. A "top down" approach of setting a figure of 6% of GDP for educational spending and then thinking of ways and means to spend the billions of rupees involved is not the right way to go about the task. A "bottom up" approach of first examining the requirements at every step of the educational and skills ladder, and how best to achieve the objectives in the shortest time at least cost, is a better way to proceed.

What is called for is a national education plan highlighting the direction of changes required over say the next 15 years. It should respond to the seeming public demand for English language learning, for a shift in emphasis in teaching from the humanities to science, technology, engineering, management and practical subjects at university level, for high quality science and technical education at schools and technical colleges, for job-related state vocational education and for a national scheme of apprenticeships.

If there is a clear vision of the direction of policy on education and skills, and a credible plan for implementation of the changes, step by step, finding the money to do so for state universities and state schools, may not present a major problem. Higher taxes, a gradual decline in defense spending, the sale of state enterprises with proceeds wholly earmarked for education and long-term, low interest loans from international financial institutions are all options to raise the necessary resources.

Let’s sing that song together

 , The Island

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By Liyanage Amarakeethi

(Excerpts of a speech delivered at the Arts Theatre, University of Peradeniya, on 29th August, 2012).

Last two months have been educational for me as, I am sure, they have been for all of you. During our trade union action last year, many of us in our generation, those of us who are mid-career academics in this university, learned from our seniors how to stand up for our rights. This time it is our generation that has had to take up leadership in this trade union action though we did have the invaluable support of our teachers at every step. Even though I was active in politics in my teenage-years, guided by my uncle who was the Kurunegala District Secretary of the Sama Samaja Party, and though I have been active individually in politics all along after that, for the last 20 some years I have stayed away from getting involved in any kind of party politics. The same is true of most of us who make the leadership of Peradeniya teacher associations.

Critical distance from

political parties

We may have intellectual engagements with the positions of different political parties, but as academics we have kept a critical distance from all parties. More importantly as academics we also keep a critical distance from the centres of power such as the state. We know very well that the state is an institution that is all too easily tempted into assuming that it has limitless power. Therefore, the institutions of civil society, including universities, have a responsibility to keep it in check, watched, and critiqued. To meet that responsibility of universities is our duty as intellectuals. So, we keep our distance from government. We have learned from the greatest intellectuals of our time that our duty as intellectuals is to speak truth to power. Genuine intellectuals speak truth to any centre of power. That is our duty. We have re-learned that lesson during our struggle.

Things I have learned during the last two months have been much more than what I learnt during the years of political activism in my youth. Today, I want to speak very briefly of some of those things. Before that, however, I want to recall what we have been up to for the last two months.

For the last two months, we have been united. No matter what our opponents and critics have said we have remained united. As intellectuals, we are men and women of ideas. We think. We rethink. We disagree. We debate. We rethink. That is our life, that is what we value about our life. Although each of us has his or her own ideas about things, we have come together to fight for a common cause because we know that many of the problems we face in our academic life have resulted from lack of funding allocated to our sector, to universities, creating conditions that made it difficult and sometimes impossible for us to teach and to do research. These things are our life. We come to life when we are busy at these things. We come to life in the presence of our students in classes, in lecture rooms and in labs. We come to life when we encounter great thoughts in the library. We get goose bumps when we see a new truth related to our subjects, to our fields. We know the pleasure of encountering a new idea. We know the pleasure of discovery. We know the pleasure of creativity. We know the pleasure of seeing our students thinking with us, learning with us, debating with us. Every day we find at least some children of our country learning something new with us, and this makes us look forward to what they will learn with us tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Legacy of Free Education

To see everyday that in what we do together we are passing the legacy of free education to the next generation is also a pleasure for us. That is how we feel that we are in the middle of the stream of history in our country and the world, and it is a joy for us. That is also why we have chosen this life. That is why many of us have returned to this country after completing higher studies in much richer countries where better opportunities were available to us. We did not take them because our conscience told us to return to join the history of our own country, to take part in making the history of our own country, to remind ourselves that own individual destinies are inseparable from the destiny of our society, of our people, of our country.

These are all things that nourish our intellectual life, our creative life.

But of course, our salary is also important. Salary is fundamental for us to live with dignity, to achieve success in our academic endeavours, to live up to our responsibilities for our children and our families. We don’t have to shy away from demanding a respectable salary, a salary that will keep us interested in what we do, a salary that will sustain us through long hours of research, thinking, and writing and a salary that is enough that we do not have to turn away from our chosen and proper duties to eke out supplements to our income that we need to support our loved ones. We need a salary that is just enough that we do not have to go behind politicians to look for extra money. Our true vocation is to create knowledge and share it. For that we need a great deal of independence. For that we need a better salary than we now have, a much better salary. Therefore, the demand for an adequate salary for teachers has to be an integral part of the excellent universities that we dream of, and which we are trying to create for this country.

Academic freedom and autonomy

But we have realised that no amount of money can safeguard the academic freedom and autonomy that are also integral parts of excellent universities. We don’t want a better salary at the price of academic freedom. We want a salary increase but we don’t want the politicization of universities to be the price that is paid for it. We want politicization to stop. We want to to remove the political interference that has already taken root in universities. That is why our demand for better salary is only one part of our struggle, and that this is so is why our struggle is the most wide-ranging, the most socially-significant trade union action this country has ever seen.

For the last two months our struggle has not being limited to securing our own financial interests or even our own dignity, but we have dignified ourselves by drawing attention to the larger socio-political issues related to every aspect of the education sector of this country.

By doing so, we have transformed our struggle into a much larger social force. That is the secret of our success. Within two months, the sign "6%" has become a symbol of justice, of fundamental rights, and of democracy. It has become a visible sign that our goals transcend certain boundaries that we have often taken to be untranscendable. When others have seen in "6%" the sign of all that we are doing, they know that we have renewed our contract with society, to use once again the beautiful Gramscian phrase used by my friend Sumathy Sivamohan to describe what we do in her address last year at the public seminar organised by FUTA.

We can create something extremely important, a history making dialogue, something no political party could even think of. Many of the things that we have learned through this struggle about the importance of education, about democracy, about emancipation, and about freedom are things that are way beyond the consciousness of all of our political leaders. That is why the FUTA leadership is already regarded as harbingers of a new social reality. By talking to people on streets, by writing to the newspapers, by marching on roads, even by attending meetings like this, we have all added to that new reality.

FUTA does have a message. Every day that message grows in meaning as each of us adds to it. Every day that message reaches areas where such messages have never reached before.

FUTAmessage

What is that message? It is the message that free education at every level has been the most important factor for social change in the history of Sri Lanka and we must pass it on to our children and their children. The sense of social justice that the idea of free education brought into our society was unprecedented. Nothing like that has happened before and its importance continues. Its work is not yet done. That message needs to be heard in every village in this country. That message needs to be taken to every neighbourhood in this country. It needs to be shared in every slum in every city. That message needs to be passed to every citizen of this country, not just in Sri Lanka but wherever Sri Lankans have gone abroad to work, it has to be repeated. Only then will a social consciousness about the need of state- funded education will grow and grow and grow. We don’t want this consciousness to grow only for our jobs to be secure; we want the ideals of freedom we hold dear to us to be safe. Some may have other opportunities that education offers, but many like us will continue to have access to education only at these universities. We realised this was our last chance to take this message to our people. We were right. It seems that many people have forgotten the significance of free education. But, when we talked to them on the streets, at public rallies, the preciousness of free education, its absolute social value returned to their minds like the words of a beautiful song that they used to know. Now many of them remember the entire song. They will sing it. We will sing it with them. That will be the song of our victory!! One day, very soon, we will sing that song together!!

Though some of us may like to think that academic ivory towers are possible and they are there, and we can live in them in a peaceful independence, all of us know that the moment we go out of this beautiful university park we see poverty, we encounter social marginalization all around us. We see schools are closing down. The school at Uda Peradeniya, where our former vice chancellor received his primary education faces the risk of closure. It might have already disappeared from the map of that village if not for the poor children who still attend it. During our struggle we realised that hundreds of rural schools are disappearing. They are disappearing from the consciousness and memory of the people who no longer remember those schools as centres of excellent education and the conditions of social improvement.



During our struggle we saw how those memories were being systematically erased. Systematic cuts to funding to rural schools has undermined the very foundations through which the free education was once delivered.

Let’s sing...

I know that some of you thought that we went beyond the mandate of a trade union by talking about these issues by making them our own. But please consider: the very school system that made you educated citizens, that made it possible for you to be here, might not be able to produce anyone like you any more. That school system might not be able to send us students from every corner of our country who can join with us in the joy of true academic pursuits. All these issues appeared in front of us, when we reflected on how we could protect the state education sector in a way that will in turn protect our own academic lives.

There we found that free education has been the greatest social leveller in the modern history of our country. That is our inheritance, let us make it our legacy too. For various reasons our society may need all kinds of private education institutes, but it is the state education sector that can guarantee for all a sense of social equality, which was philosophical and political foundation of free education. For the last two months, we have been fighting for the preservation of our inheritance, this legacy. We are happy that many people have gained a new understanding of that invaluable inheritance. That was why our Colombo rally was the greatest ever public rally on education.

During the last two months, we have been able to put aside minor divisions among us. We have not not succumbed to factionalism. We have put aside personal ambitions. Deans, heads of the department, professors all put aside institutional hierarchies and we have marched alongside each other like equals. That in itself was a transforming experience for many of us. In that we discovered our shared humanity, we understood the value of humility. Our struggle made us all more human and humane.

The most crucial days of our struggle have arrived. These are days that will test our courage, our dedication. Perhaps, this September will bring us the greatest challenge that many of us have ever faced personally. But, as someone who participated in that awesome rally in Colombo and in the very enthusiastic action committee meeting after it, I can tell you that we shall overcome, we shall overcome and someday soon. After being without salaries for two months, our spirit remains unbroken; our courage keeps growing. The government may want to break us and to get us to their feet. We will not give them that pleasure. We are academics. We are the four thousand people in this country with an important role to play in this country. We are men and women who can shake governments and mobilise people with the visions of the future that we can create and share. We are academics, we are Peradeniya academics. Very soon, we will walk back into our classrooms with our heads still held high.

I am not a big leader of the FUTA but I trust my leadership. By the time we return to work in a few weeks, we will have won a significant number of our demands, as well as all our overdue salaries. And we will have reminded the people as well as the government the true meaning of free education. We will have created a public consciousness on education that will last for many years to come. We will have taken our places in history. Let’s stay united so that we get to see what we have set out to do become reality very soon.

Let me end this speech by quoting the title of one my favourite books. This is how two of the greatest educationists of the 20th century, Paulo Freire and Miles Horton named their book: "We make the road by walking."

Ladies and gentlemen. let’s finish this walk and make the road that will take our people to the land of educated citizenship. Let’s make that road to freedom.