* Minister to hold discussions with striking university academics of Sri Lanka
Wed, Aug 1, 2012, 07:37 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

Aug 01, Colombo: The union of Sri Lanka's striking academics, Sri Lanka Federation of University Teachers' Associations (FUTA), is to meet Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa today (August 01) to discuss their demands.
The Minister has come forward to discuss with the FUTA to find a solution to the strike by the university teachers that has been continuing for nearly a month.
The FUTA launched a continuous strike on July 04 despite the salary increment granted by the Ministry of Higher Education and academic activities at the country's universities have been paralyzed due to the strike.
Minister of Higher Education S.B. Dissanayake has said that a 72 percent salary increase has already been provided for the University lecturers.
However, according to the FUTA, the strike is based on broader demands to find solutions to other problems of the universities not just the salary increase.
The FUTA demands granting the salary increase promised by the government in 2008, increasing allocations for education up to 6% of GDP, freeing universities from politicization and granting facilities to admit children of the university teachers to the schools.

A silent revolution? ‘Free Education’ and Sri Lankan women

August 1, 2012, 12:00 pm , the island

By Carmen Wickramagamage

It is no exaggeration to say that one of the social groups that has most benefited from the revolutionary education reforms implemented starting 1947 [which most of us know as either Free Education or Kannangara Reforms] is Women. In 1946, when the overall literacy rate for the country was 57.8%, only 43.8% of the female population was literate as opposed to 70.1% of the male population (Panditaratne and Selvanayagam, 1973). By 2001, however, the percentage of literate women had gone up to 90% of the female population in comparison with 93% for the male population. Among Lankan youth between the ages of 15-24, it is even higher at 97% literate females to 99% literate males, according to UNICEF Sri Lanka statistics for the 2005-10 period.

This poses an interesting question: How did the gap between the percentages of literate men and women come to be narrowed so rapidly and significantly during the intervening 60-odd year period? What was the equivalent of the "open sesame" that opened the closed doors of formal school-based education for Lankan women in the post-independence period? The simple answer: "Free Education." While the Kannangara reforms did not introduce "free education" to Ceylon/Sri Lanka, they (i) abolished the earlier two-tiered education system very much pegged to class where fee-levying "English Medium" schools catered to the local elite and a system of "free" Vernacular Schools catered to the masses; (ii) introduced Swabhasha [or First Language] Education into the school system starting 1947, where it was made compulsory for students to be educated in their "mother tongue." It was these two reforms that have enabled Education to function as an instrument of social justice in Sri Lanka, freeing individuals from the debilitating impacts of ascribed social status such as caste, class and gender and instituting a meritocracy of sorts in Sri Lanka, however imperfect it might be, where the deserving individual can move up the social and economic ladder on the basis of merit irrespective of his/her "origins."

The education policy, however, was not alone in elevating women’s life-chances in Sri Lanka. The enlightened policy of "free health," another revolutionary welfare policy measure, went hand in hand with "free education" in bringing about a remarkable improvement in Lankan women’s physical quality of life, as manifested in such indicators as maternal mortality and life-expectancy rates, making Sri Lanka at one time the ‘poster child’ in UN development circles for its counter-intuitive achievements in the Human Development Index despite its classification as a ‘low-income’ nation. As Dileni Gunewardena points out in a newspaper article (Daily News, July 12, 2012) citing a recent study by Seema Jayachandran and Adriana Lleras-Muney, women’s health indicators and women’s educational indicators are linked. As women live longer, parents appear more willing to invest in their education. Equally importantly, as researchers have pointed out, education for women carries other kinds of social dividends, among them, a deceleration in population growth due to shrinking family size. There is one simple reason: staying in school longer delays the age at first marriage and, combined with career requirements and increased receptivity to public service messages, such women have fewer children. Literate/educated women are also a good conduit for public health messages. The significantly lower under-5 child morbidity and mortality rates in the case of Sri Lanka in comparison with the rest of South Asia have been attributed to the higher education rates of women. Educated women are more receptive to information on children’s nutrition, family hygiene, etc. Though we have not sustained and consolidated these gains in the recent past due to many reasons such as the recently concluded Civil War, it is necessary to highlight the sea-change in Lankan women’s lives brought about by these achievements at this critical juncture when cuts in state expenditure on health and education threaten to arrest if not roll back the remarkable achievements that made Sri Lanka the ‘Miracle of Asia’ long before that slogan came to be adopted by the present government.

But how did ‘free education’ benefit women in particular? As long as education was not free, cultural reasons, or gender norms regarding the place of men and women in society, combined with economic reasons, in the case of women, to keep women at home and away from formal, school-based education. Let me explain: as long as education is not free, parents with limited resources must make a choice regarding whom to educate and how much. Considering that in the Sri Lankan context, deep-rooted gender normsassign men the role of ‘bread’ winner and wage-earner, and women the home-based roles of housewife, wife and mother, it would seem logical for parents to expend their limited resources on the education of sons. Therefore, what the state expenditure on universal free education in the mother-tongue did was to take away the economic rationale to parental discrimination with regard to access to education for their sons and daughters.

One could then argue that it was not all Lankan women but women of the socially and culturally marginalised groups who were the real beneficiaries of the Kannangara Reforms; that certain women, who faced a double or triple jeopardy in access to education because gender combined with class, caste and other ‘disabilities’ to keep them out of school, were the ones who truly benefited. But was it only the economic rationale that prohibited women entry within the gateways of educational institutions? What about the cultural rationale that for long years saw "education" as spoiling women for marriage and making them less desirable in the marriage market so that parents with sufficient economic means would prefer to save for a dowry rather than invest in the education of their daughters? Among other reasons that, in the early years of female education in colonial Ceylon, kept even women of the local Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim elite out of formal school-based education were the fear of contamination due to inter-class and inter-caste mixing at school and the fear of conversion at Christian missionary schools. For these same reasons, as Malathi de Alwis has shown in her discussion of the Udduvil Girls’ School in Jaffna, sometimes it was women of the lower castes that first benefited from formal, school-based education while women of the upper-castes and classes were kept away. For women then to access educational opportunities, educated local men had to regard educated wives as an asset and upper-class parents had to see educated daughters as more a means for status-consolidation than a status-loss!

So how did the Reforms of 1945 help? It created the "visibility effect." The inevitable increase in the school-going population of girls with universal free education ‘normalized’ or ‘naturalized’ the notion of the educated woman. The educated woman was no longer an anomaly. No family wanted to be denied its social and cultural dividends all else being equal.

Today, with some variation in gains attributable to ethnic, religious and class differences [the most deprived group being Indian Tamil women of the plantation sector], Lankan women as a whole have used education not only to break free of gender norms but to challenge gender-based stereotypes regarding women’s brain power, most famously articulated in the Sinhala saying, "gaenunge nuwana haendi mitei digai" [=women’s intelligence is only good enough to taste the quality of the curries they cook!]. Thus, according to the World Development Report 2009, the ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary schools was 102 to 100 in the year 2006. The percentage of girls to boys in senior secondary school enrollment in fact has now come to be skewed in favour of girls. So, while the percentage of girls to boys in Grades 10-11 is 51%, the percentage of girls in Grades 12-13 increases to 58%! The percentage of women to men at the public universities repeats these numbers where female students comprise 58% of the overall intake to public universities according to UGC statistics for the year 2010. And if we were to break this percentage down along subject streams and in terms of the intake to different faculties, an interesting picture emerges that can only be attributed to the socially transformative potential of Free Education:

These numbers foreground the slow but sure feminization of higher education—a feminization that has gone unremarked but is the indubitable result of the silent revolution brought about by the gender-neutral policy of universal and compulsory free education. It is also a reality that should make policy makers and concerned citizens pause: Why are male students turning away from education, particularly higher education? How would certain spheres of study be affected by this feminization, for instance, the study of the social sciences and the humanities or law and medicine?

Since this piece is not an attempt to unequivocally celebrate women’s gains in education but to raise a red flag regarding certain half-concealed dimensions to where women are in education and higher education, let me now engage in a further disaggregation of the available statistics on women in education. Although more women than men are to be found in senior secondary education or A/Ls, the distribution of men and women across subject-streams at AL should give us pause. Of the 58% percent of women in senior secondary education or A/L classes, the majority are offering Arts subjects. Hence, of the number enrolled for A/L Arts subjects, 67% are female [which, in absolute numbers, is 152, 158 female students] while only 43% of the total or 76,339 are male. In contrast, the number of female students as a percentage of the total enrolled for Science subjects is 48% and for Commerce subjects 47%. Now, if we combine these figures with the following facts—that there are not only more jobs for science-qualified students but that these jobs on average carry higher wages [based on research conducted by Swarna Jayaweera and others] and that the female unemployment rate, Age 15 & above, is twice that of men (SL Labour Force Survey, 2009)—we have to worry about where the women are in education. A similar scenario repeats itself at university as Table II shows. University enrollment is most skewed in favour of women in the Arts Faculties at 78-80% of enrollments. Hence, if there is a higher percentage of unemployed or under-employed Arts graduates compared to, say, Commerce or Science graduates [though this claim is open to debate], then it stands to reason that a higher percentage of that number would be female.

The question is why are more women than men gravitating towards Arts subjects at A/Ls? Is it Biology or Socialization or Unequal Access to Senior Secondary Science Education that is determining this choice? In the case of Sri Lanka, a major reason for the higher enrollment of students in the Arts Stream at A/Ls is the relative inequity in the distribution of Type 1AB Schools: that is, schools offering senior secondary science education, which are mostly located in urban and semi-urban areas. Take just two districts: in Colombo, the number of Type 1AB schools is 68 to 83 Type 1 C schools [that is, schools offering AL classes without the Science Stream]; in Kandy, Type 1AB schools are only 50 compared to 175 of Type 1C schools! Combine this fact with the other known fact that more male students enroll for A/L science subjects and we have to ask if gender plays a role in who gains access to Science A/L education. Are parents with limited means more reluctant to enroll their daughters in senior secondary science education because of the higher costs involved or due to the longer distances they may have to travel in order to get to such schools? Today, private tuition is sometimes the only gateway to universities in the science stream with students sometimes attending two classes per subject! Are girls then opting for Arts because of easier access and lower costs?

The inequities in access to education, and I should say access to good-quality education, that I have outlined above makes it clear that despite 60-odd years of ‘free’ universal education, we are yet to arrive at a completely level playing field. However, the solution to these documented inequities does not lie in a withdrawal of the state from investment in education and further privatization of education. There is a very real danger, from the point of view of women, that parents if called upon to bear the cost of their off-spring’s education, may opt to invest more in the education of their sons at the expense of that of their daughters given the endemic son preference and entrenched gender norms of this country. While it is possible that both reduced family size, and the visibility effect that has ‘normalized’ the phenomenon of female education in the intervening years, may offset gender-based discrimination in access to education, we cannot leave it to chance. As Dileni Gunewardena has pointed out (Daily News, June 30, 2011) citing what happened in China where earlier gains in female life-expectancy were reversed when reforms came to be introduced in 1979, we cannot sit on our laurels banking on the goodwill of parents to decide on ‘merit’ rather than gender with regard to whom to educate in cases of limited resources—which is the case for a majority of parents in this country. It is therefore time for those of us, women and men, who take a justifiable pride in the near-miraculous gains in social indicators of well-being in this country to speak up in the face of the obvious withdrawal in commitment on the part of the present government to education as evidenced by the allocation of just 1.8% of the GDP in the 2012 Budget for both general and higher education. Education is a right, not a privilege. Now is the time for us to get together to save it for all citizens of this country! (The writer teaches English at the University of Peradeniya.)

In defence of university autonomy and academic freedom

August 1, 2012, 6:51 pm 

By Prof. Wiswa Warnapala, the island

Continued from yesterday’s Midweek

University is an institution, which cannot discharge its functions and responsibilities without a measure of freedom. In Sri Lanka, as in other developing countries, Universities attract public attention and all governments are concerned with the cost of expansion. The critics, as usual, look for problems in university administration, and the Treasury imposes controls on university expenditure; all these criticisms and controls are viewed as attempts to interfere in the manner they manage their affairs. It was the high cost of university education which calls for the introduction of new patterns of university government, and the UGC was invented to bring about a compromise between control and autonomy. Control, and political interference, to be exact Ministerial control, was avoided by the UGC, which, of course, was the instrument of governmental policy. UGC is the best guarantee against overt attempts by politicians to interfere in the affairs of the Universities. Ideally, as Lord Annan said, "the UGC must be able to absorb all the political pressures and shocks in the form of a buffer." It will be for the UGC to decide which pressures are unreasonable and which ought to be transmitted to the universities.

Hence, the accepted position of the UGC is that of a "buffer" between the government and the universities interpreting each party to the other. According to the British tradition, the UGC is independent of the universities, though most of its members are academics of repute, and it is also, for the most part, independent of the government; it is the accepted source of expert advice on university affairs, including the allocation of resources which the government made available. From the point of view of universities, it is the effective medium for representing their opinions and needs of the Government. Therefore, the creation of the UGC, which has been emulated by all the Commonwealth countries, has been regarded as an "eminently successful example of administrative ingenuity". This function can only be performed by the UGC which enjoys the confidence and respect of both the government and the universities. In the Sri Lankan context, it is not easy to satisfy the two institutions mentioned above. In the United Kingdom, it began in 1919 as a channel of communication between the state and the universities, and the specific function was to interpret to the government of the policies and financial needs of the universities. Later, as in Sri Lanka, it was called upon to plan their development, and it was here that the government adhered to the fundamental principles of academic freedom and autonomy. The Report of the UGC of the United Kingdom (1947) stated that "education and research in the universities of this country are not functions of the State". It further stated that "it was essentially one of a partnership between Universities and State". The general character of this relationship came to be substantially changed during the post-war period in the UK.

Academic freedom misunderstood

Universities have a form of self-government, and it is the concept of academic freedom that has created so much of misunderstanding in Sri Lanka. Academic freedom is an essential element in the conception of a university which surfaced during the middle ages. From the very inception, universities around the world enjoyed the right to manage their affairs and to decide on what to teach. Universities, thus, enjoyed a unique kind of freedom, but it, however, did not mean that they could teach or write anything they liked, for example they could not offend the Church as in the case of Galileo. It did not mean that the governments could not interfere with the universities but there were accepted parameters within which it was done. Academic freedom and university autonomy are, therefore, intertwined principles which recognize the right to teach what and to whom; four kinds of freedom came to be associated with a university. Firstly the selection of students who are fit for higher education, next, the freedom to appoint its academic staff; thirdly to determine the standards of attainment and the nature and content of courses offered, and last, to determine its size and growth. As in teaching, there is similar freedom in research. All these rights and freedoms are qualified as the rights of an individual in the modern state.

The central idea of the university is the pursuit of knowledge. However, a university is not just an institution of higher education, but a center of learning. It requires its teachers to carry out research if the main function of the university is to be realized. In Sri Lanka, the funds for research are limited as there are no organizations to sponsor research, and this, in my view, is a matter which interferes with the quality and quantity of research in the universities. However, the threat to academic freedom emanates from those in power who wish to control thought, and prescribe opinion on matters related to the production of knowledge; secondly, it emanates from those in power who, for different reasons, want to control the other academic roles of academics, and interference in respect of this role comes from inside the University as well as from outside. In my own personal experience, such attempts to restrict academic freedom fell within this category. Therefore, the concept of academic freedom is central to the life of a university. If knowledge is to be refined for the benefit of the society, it is only through an institution that it can be profitably achieved, and the university, therefore, cannot play its central role without freedom and autonomy.

Public discourse on university education

Today, in Sri Lanka, there is a public discourse on certain aspects of university education in the country. The significance of this issue lies not so much in the profundity of the changes which the system produced in the last fifty years but in the convulsions of the current system. The growing public interest in the universities of the country is largely due to the realization that the university system can make a unique contribution to the national development of the country. The conception that the university education is essentially for a small and privileged class is now redundant. The need for social justice for all classes of people had opened the doors of the universities more widely than in the period in which it came into being. The Sri Lankan state has given substantial support to expand access of higher educational opportunities. However, this phase of development is currently entering a period beset with obstacles and difficulties which need immediate attention of the state.

In the last three or four decades, there was a considerable expansion in the intake which, of course, was stimulated by a great demand for higher education. The rapid increase in the number of students, which had taken place in the sixties, was not simultaneously accompanied by a concentrated attention on quality. It was in the last decade that a major effort has been invested in this direction, and the very process of transformation was accelerated in the last few years. It was the exhortation of this policy which called upon the universities to devote their energies to improving the quality of education offered to the students. This had to be done notwithstanding the increasing pressure for the expansion of the intake.

Continued tomorrow

INSIDE STORY: National Education

A Policy and Structural Change in Education for a Better Tomorrow

| by Professor N.T.S. Wijesekera

( July 30, 2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) This article is a summary of the key points delivered at the public seminar on the theme “National Education Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”, conducted by the University of Moratuwa Teachers’ Association (UMTA) at S De S Jayasinghe Hall, Dehiwala on 18th July 2012 (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Seminar of the University of 
Moratuwa Teachers Association at Dehiwala

Every ‘Nation’s Dream’ is to achieve the status of a ‘Great Nation’ that can stand on its own. In the quest for a great nation, a sustainable education system is indispensable. It is more so for our nation because we do not possess the commonly known valuable resources of the world except the invaluable human resource with a very high literacy rate. A sustainable education system would pave the way to produce responsible citizens, ensure ample support for the development and hence to build a strong economy. Further, a sustainable education system will positively contribute to make prudent decisions that will ensure the sustainable wellbeing of the global ecosystem at large.

Presently the University Academics are requesting the government to provide a compatible remuneration to attract the best that are moving to the industry, plus a substantial commitment from the government to enhance the status of their working facilities and upgrading the status of the students presently filtered through the primary and secondary education systems. This has been put forth as a request for the promised salary increase and for a commitment to enhance the public expenditure on education to a level of 6% of GDP. In this instance, the GDP is taken as a unit of measurement keeping to international standards. Therefore it is important not to be mistaken as 6% from GDP.

Many can raise a reasonable question as to why the University academics in this country up to now were not concerned about the sustainability of the entire education system of the country. Answer though implicit, leads to the point that at this juncture, the university academics have realised it is high time for the Sri Lankan academia to come forward and start a constructive dialogue about the core issues of the education system and appeal the nation to take a serious note of this major crisis that causes catastrophic consequences for the forthcoming generations.

Role of the University

In order to rationalise a sustainable education system, first of all, it is necessary to identify the role of a university. In the literature, a university is defined as an entity to ensure that every student, no matter the wealth of parents, has a chance to enjoy the ‘Nation's Dream’; educate the leaders in a democratic system; provide advanced learning and knowledge through faculty research and giving students the opportunity to broaden their minds even when learning does not seem immediately relevant to their careers; teach students to interact with people and appreciate the differences and diversity; and help students to find a passion and even a purpose in life. Universities of a great nation produce good workers who would earn foreign exchange with their products and services. They would also produce good graduates and leaders who would directly attract foreign exchange of international markets to provide cutting edge services and products.

Due to these characteristics, Universities in general are considered as the Backbone of a Country. In very simple terms the universities produce citizens who can exercise influence on behalf of Humanity and Civilisation.

It is no secret that for universities to thrive, academics and students who work together to achieve the aforementioned objectives are a clear necessity. Thus, a university should ideally be composed of good academics, good students, good facilities and possess a conducive-environment for education. In the remaining part of the article, aspects of academics and students who shoulder the pillars of a good higher education system are in focus.

Academics

A good university system needs to look after its academics by providing good salaries and a good supportive environment, which includes good infrastructure and good support staff. A survey carried out in July 2012 at University of Moratuwa revealed that at the present salary scales of an academic (academic positions are filled by the cream of a batch of students) who had obtained a PhD degree would get only 31% of what his or her counterpart who opted not to pursue studies, but to join and work in industry. A Senior Professor who is an Icon of Wisdom would get only 27% of what is earned by an industry parallel (Figure 2). This pathetic situation has discouraged the best graduates joining the academia. A reversing of this trend which is to attract the best graduates to join the academia is an absolute necessity. Other than this it is also necessary to incorporate measures to retain the attracted staff for the purpose of ensuring a sustainable university system contributing to the delivery of a Nation's expectations.

Figure 2: University - Industry Salary Comparison Deteriorates with Time and Experience

A comparison of international value of a university academic, from the information of the book "Paying the Professoriate" (Figure 3) indicated that the most opted greener pastures across the oceans provide much greater remuneration packages. The review of this book on the web presents a good salary comparison utilising a common indicator.

Therefore it is important that the university academics are at least given a salary compatible with the local market.

Figure 3: A Recent Book on Salary

University Facilities

When one considers the university facilities, it is evident that the infrastructure status is very poor and rapidly deteriorating. The research support is nonexistent, laboratories lack new equipment, lecture room space is inadequate and student accommodation needs refurbishment. The current financial figures from state universities reveal that per student expenditure is reducing at an alarming rate simply because the state is increasing the student numbers without increasing the commitment for infrastructure (Figure 4).

This situation creates a serious constraint in effective teaching and research delivery by a university academic when attempting to fulfil the expectations of a nation. This leads to displeasure and frustration among the academic community. Even though the salary of an academic reaches the world standards, this issue remains a great factor contributing to an Academic leaving the system. Such departures would certainly jeopardise the sustainability of the system and the dreams of a Nation.

 

 

 

Figure 4: Comparative Statistics Reflecting the Deterioration of Student Facility Availability

University Students

Looking at the situation with respect to the status of students; they are recruited from the list prepared from the results of the GCE Advanced Level examination and the Z-Scores. Only 15-17% of those who sit for the examination get qualified for university education. Many can raise the question, Aren't they the best out of the group?, Aren't they adequate to produce good graduates?

Surveys carried out among the university academics expressing their level of satisfaction on the students presently admitted as university entrants, revealed a major flaw in the attempt to achieve sustainability of the higher education and the education system as a whole. In this survey, several factors from the view point of academic staff were qualitative evaluated. The factors used in the opinion survey were: Willingness to study/learn; Students not exhausted; Conceptually sound (Knowledge of subject basics); Experienced in group work and Honestly indicating the member contributions; Good speaking and writing in university media of instructions; Experienced in using basic office-software; Good in speed reading; Having good social values; Trained in timely submission of outputs; and Having a good vocabulary. The study of a staff member sample of 45 at the University of Moratuwa revealed that while the first factor just exceeded the 50% satisfaction level of the academics, the rest were between 25% and 50%. The speed reading capability (Figure 5) has been at the lowest of expectation level. The same survey carried out with a sample of 75 staff members from the University of Sri Jayawardenapura revealed similar results.

In order to capture how the students felt about themselves nicely fitting the aspirations of the university academics, the same survey was carried out using a sample of 90 students of university of Moratuwa and the results are shown in the Figure 5. The averages of the results provide a good indicator that reflects a compromise between high staff aspirations and student psychology overvaluing the true position. These results indicate that at best the students would be reaching the 50% level of expectations and hence the primary and secondary education systems require a take a look at its roots without further delay.

 

Figure 5: The Status of University Entrants

Primary and Secondary Education

Considering the primary and secondary education system, some issues that reflect badly on the sustainability of a nation and its aspiration to become the ‘Knowledge Hub of Asia’ are; the number of teachers, teacher training, school buildings, school facilities and low staff salaries. In this connection the following factors also have been evidenced, researched and some are published in Journals.

After passing GCE Ordinary Level, typically a student takes a minimum of 4 years to enter the university. This is a time loss at prime age. At the Advanced Level, the way IT and English are taught, examined, and results are delivered to the students, reflect the care and interest taken to familiarise these two subjects. Further, more than 50% of students do not experience the grip of science as they get the knowledge without a practical exposure. In most education and administrative forums, Advanced Level subjects are recommended to be geared towards employment, without even considering the real objectives of primary and secondary education. The present Advanced Level and Ordinary Level Syllabi are attempting to cater to those who fail the examination and not for those who aspire success and further. The chaos of IT education is well reflected in a research which identified that in a survey of schools, the principals say that student computer usage is 20hrs/week while IT instructors of the same school say it is 6-10 hrs/week: Research pertaining to primary and secondary education system has also recognised that unmanageable student numbers in each class, poor management of class rooms and problems with increased subject contents are critical issues. The dependency on tuition, lack of faith in regular school teachers, negative attitudes of the parents and students on school teachers is a serious negative phenomenon that characterises the plight of the present education system. Research also has indicated that there is deterioration of math knowledge in the university entrants and this can be attributed to the reliance on private tuition system. Lack of student centred activities such as project explanations, field work, opportunity for creative work, and team work make a serious impact on the expected potential of a student reaching the university system.

A recent survey of a student's lifetime in the Ordinary Level Classes revealed that 37.5% of time is spent for system survival (such as eating and sleeping) and 55.2% is spent on education, tuition and transport for education. A similar survey indicated that Advanced Level students use 29.3% for system survival while 66.7% of time is spent for studying for examinations and travelling for education.

Only icing, no cake?

The universities are presently adjusting their curricula and coaching classes to address the issues or deficiencies that are arising from the primary and secondary education systems. In addition, the universities are also adding cosmetic programs to satisfy the industry requirement of "A readymade practitioner". However, what is important to note is that the duration of a university's academic program remains unchanged at either 3 or 4 years. Therefore it is inevitable that the University's core curricular needs to be curtailed or by this sandwich effect. Therefore it is obvious that the graduates do not obtain an education they or the country deserve. Figure 6 is an attempt to illustrate these concerns.

Figure 6: Accommodation of Deficiencies is a Threat to Quality

This creates two problems. The straightforward one is that the country does not get the desired outputs because the subject contents tend to reach below par.

The other is that the university academics find the students would require postgraduate education to carry out the kind of research required for world class competition. 

Figure 7: High Disparity between the Outputs

Since the government presently does not support postgraduate education, the most likely result would be the frustration of academic staff which inturn affect the sustenance of Higher Education System. These factors are presently in existence.

There is a huge disparity in the state expenditure for various undergraduate study programmes (Figure 7). This disparity among various programs cannot be noted in developed countries. Therefore it is important to revisit these curricula and facilities and then upgrade them to such levels that would ensure quality outputs that can match the knowledge-hub aspirations. It is good to take a close look at the foundation qualifications of administrators and planners who are yet to understand the present plight of the education system in the country. It may be prudent to provide an improved status to relevant degree programmes hoping that the outputs from such degree programs would provide a better service to the education system in the future.

There is a big problem at hand. As academics, it is time to come forward to speak out in order to save the nation and strengthen the on-going efforts by pointing out the planning and implementation deficiencies. The University academics are undoubtedly the best brains in the country that can provide the leadership to the betterment of the country's education system.

Booster Dose is a Must

The foregoing discussion clearly points to the fact that in order to ensure best academics in the national university system, it is necessary that not only the salaries are comparable but also the entire education system is revitalised.

A look at the historical public expenditure figures on education pertaining to those nearby nations and the nations that have achieved developed status revealed that such countries had gradually increased the public expenditure on education to reach a point 6% of GDP or more (Figure 8).

It is evident that our nation also requires such a system-boost to clear this big hurdle. In most countries public investment appears to decay after a peak, but this is guessed as the stepping in of private sector collaborations once the system is in place. Thus, it is quite clear that we need a booster dose in education expenditure and when the system has reached sustainability, it is possible to fearlessly open the system to private collaborative opportunities.

In conclusion, the academics and the public in general have a noble task to carryout in order to secure a sustainable education system. It is not an easy one. It is necessary to congratulate the wisdom of Sri Lankan academic community for stepping out of traditional trade union framework to provide leadership to a visionary struggle targeting the country to become a better place to live and also to become the ‘Knowledge Hub of Asia’.

Figure 8: Comparison of Input to Education as a Percentage of GDP - The System Booster

Professor Sohan Wijesekera, Senior Professor,at the Department ofDept of Civil Engineering,University of Moratuwa