Glimpses of the Real University Crisis

November 1, 2012, 8:30 pm , The Island


By Professor G. H. Peiris

(Continued from Midweek Review  of Oct. 31, 2012)

There is another implication of the "6% demand" which tends to be overlooked – namely, that such a level of educational expenditure without a substantial increase of government revenue from its present levels would unavoidably result in a curtailment of resources allocated to other segments of the economy which, in turn, would have a disastrous impact on education. Only a few would recollect today the dreadful conditions of the early 1970s (with average annual real growth rate hovering around 1.2%) when the government found it difficult to employ (even as ‘Interns’) the meagre output of the two medical faculties in existence at that time. For many Arts graduates it was a time of despair, the continuing absorption of some among them into school education, notwithstanding. University learning in the Social Sciences, for instance, was made to appear utterly redundant by the spectacle of some of the more talented graduates, recruited as ‘Development Officers’ and distributed among the ‘DRO Divisions’ of that time, being made to idle, loitering outside their office buildings, sometimes in groups of 15 or 20, because their bosses – the DROs – did not have even chairs, leave alone work, to offer them. (I have documented the related details in a research paper on the so-called ‘Divisional Development Councils Programme’ launched in 1972.). The gist of what I say here is perhaps a well known fact – namely, that one of the vital necessities for educational development is that of ensuring productive employment to the products of the educational system, much of which has to be generated outside the educational sector.

Higher Salaries for University Teachers?

According to information furnished in an article carried in a recent issue of The Sunday Times, the FUTA demand in respect of salaries is, (a) an increase of 20% of the existing salary, backdated to 1 January 2012, and (b) a further increase of about 16.5%, with effect from January 2013, without a change in the existing allowances – in short, a steep salary increase, when compared with previous salary increases for state sector workers in Sri Lanka including the university staff. The main reasons adduced to justify this demand are (a) the failure of the universities to attract the most gifted scholars to their staff, (b) the failure of the universities to retain those recruited – i.e. ‘brain drain’, and (c) the inability of university teachers to perform their functions at optimum levels of efficiency and commitment on account of dire economic hardships. These deserve to be placed under careful scrutiny.

It was, once again, my friend Usvatte who presented the most persuasive case supporting the recruitment problem attributed to low salaries by showing that executive-grade officers of the Central Bank whose qualifications are similar to those of the university teachers are paid substantially higher salaries than university teachers (Note that there has been an acrimonious refutation of Usvatte’s data – which is of no consequence to us unless, of course, the refutation is a prelude to a "Save Free Banking" struggle.). Usvatte is correct. Long years ago, he, along with A S Jayawardena from the Bank (who went along to become its Governor) and I, along with Leslie Gunawardena (who went on to become the Vice-Chancellor at Peradeniya, and then, the Minister of Scientific Affairs) were literally in the same boat, but with a huge difference in the salaries and other benefits made available by our respective employers. This difference between the Central Bank and the university is nothing new, and was never a grievance. It remains a fact however that, with its higher salaries and other lavish benefits, the Central Bank (or any other bank) has hardly ever been able to entice those recruited to serve our universities in Economics and allied fields of study. Over many decades since the establishment of the University of Ceylon in 1942, for graduates in almost all academic fields, university teaching was invariably the first choice in employment. This was the case, as Usvatte would recollect, even for the hero of Aluth M?thanga (his fascinating semi-autobiographical novel). That preference is observable even today. The university has continued to be a very attractive place – to begin one’s career, launch a family, become your own boss at the work-place where you don’t need favours from anyone, and, if so inclined, work hard.

Salaries at the university have hardly ever been particularly attractive, but there are the perks and privileges not available to almost all other employees of the state sector – higher retirement age, paid overseas leave to pursue post-graduate studies and/or professional qualifications, additional payments for internal examination work and graduate-level teaching (a practice not followed at universities elsewhere, but a substantial supplementary income), a provident fund that grows monthly at the rate of 25% of the salary, easier access to scholarships and fellowships (for those maintaining a reasonably good record of research), paid sabbatical leave, flexible daily work schedules (especially in the ‘Arts’), less stringent promotional prospects, and opportunities for private practice including consultancy assignments outside the university system. University teachers have also been free to participate in any kind of political activity including campaigning for or against the ruling parties. This is probably why there has always been a "special relationship" between dons and politicians. I’ll come to that later in my observations on ‘University Autonomy’.

On the ‘brain drain’ (i.e. the alleged inability of the university to retain its more competent staff) there are slightly different perspectives which need to be looked at against the backdrop of the fact that brain drain has, since ancient times, been a fairly common phenomenon in higher learning the world over. And, needless to stress, the brain drain from countries like ours cannot be plugged by increasing salaries. Those who would go for money will go anyway.

The Arts Faculty at Peradeniya began to lose some of its more talented scholars in their mid-career to other universities in Sri Lanka from about the late 1950s when, in fact, the emigration of scholarly talent from Sri Lanka to universities outside the country had already begun in incipient form. From about the early 1970s there was a sharp upsurge of this outflow, with some of the best products of the so-called ‘Jennings-Atygalle Era’ leaving the faculty. Apart from their own scholarly competence, there was a whole range of factors that provided them with this mobility, such as the international "recognition" of their credentials (which invariably included doctoral degrees from some of the best universities), patronage from their former supervisors and others with influence in foreign university circles, relaxation of ‘White Australia’ restrictions, and, more generally, the ‘Friedmanite’ economic boom in the west. Having known most of them at a personal plane, I should also say that, to the majority among them, low salary was not the reason ? certainly not the main reason ? for their decision to emigrate. Many other reasons – frustration generated by declining job-satisfaction (one of the best among them, a Sociology guru, once lamented that his students don’t like him anymore because he does not dictate notes), estrangement of Sinhalese-Tamil relations (huge losses on account of this in all faculties), increasing levels of violence within and outside the university, desire to give the best possible education to the children, scarcity of essential consumer goods – probably served as the main "push factors" in their departure. For most of them there were also the "pull factors" – those that made it possible for some among them to reach positions of eminence in the world of learning.

By about the early 1990s the brain drain from the ‘Arts’ segments of our universities had reduced to an inconsequential trickle, mainly for the reason that without the required level of competence in English, it became difficult for their teachers to compete for the increasingly stringent and restricted opportunities for employment in foreign universities. We continued to have a small minority of scholars in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Language Studies with the required level of competence to serve at good universities anywhere in the world. But the reality is that even they face almost insurmountable odds in their struggle to get at least short-term ‘sabbatical’ assignments, leave alone tenured jobs, outside the country.

In numbers (and probably in quality as well) my impression is that the largest ‘brain drain’ losses in the long term have been from Medicine, Dental Science, Veterinary Science and Engineering, followed by Agriculture and the ‘pure’ sciences. Not only do these faculties skim the cream from our schools, but they have continued to produce graduates, the best of whom regularly demonstrate their ability to meet the rigorous requirements of internationally recognised academic and/or professional qualifications, and to work efficiently at some of the most prestigious institutions abroad. Many among those of their younger staff who go abroad for higher studies never return, and many of their seniors have also left and keep on leaving. But note that it is not only the high fliers in fields such as medicine, dentistry and engineering that easily find lucrative jobs abroad. Is there an interesting irony here – I mean, in the fact that those segments of the university system that have suffered most as a result of the brain drain, continuing to produce "world class" graduates? Maybe, the brain drain doesn’t make a difference so long as there is a constant inflow of talented and motivated students. Moreover, a substantial brain drain from a university could also mean that it is a "world class" place!

This brings us to the issues pertaining to economic hardships of university teachers – the third rationalisation of the salary struggle. In the early stages of our university, Ivor Jennings made sure that the university community lived in reasonable comfort. It was well fed and well housed. Even some among those of Assistant Lecturer rank lived in those beautifully designed ‘C Bungalows’.

The transformation from that resplendent ‘Vishwavidyalaya’ to ‘Ashwavidyalaya’, however, took less than a decade; and thereafter, the trend was downhill. The aggravating problems of the university staff since that time to the present were, it should be understood, not more severe than the usual middle-class problems in countries that are at transition from the global ‘low income’ to ‘middle income’ range. In order to realise this one has only to look at what teachers in places like University of Delhi or JNU go through despite salaries higher than those in Sri Lanka. But what should not be ignored is that, at least in certain fields of higher education, the university segment of our middle-class includes some who possess scarce skills and talents that must be preserved and nurtured. There are ways and means of doing that, even if a large salary increase to university teachers is ruled out as an option on the grounds that it would inevitably have an explosive chain reaction in the form of salary demands, not only from other categories of university employees (which could bring universities to a standstill), but also others of the country’s workforce.

To be concluded tomorrow