Monday, 10 February 2014 00:00
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THE right to award higher educational qualifications has always been a stormy problem in Sri Lanka due to the unclear policies followed by the Government in allowing private organisations and universities to operate without a proper regulatory and standardisation process. This has been made even murkier by the ratification of a new Gazette allowing private institutions to award degrees without conforming to professional standards. Understandably, this has led to a howl of protests.
Some of the main areas where provision has been made to award degrees are in the fields of medicine, engineering and architecture. Professional bodies of these sectors have lodged their strong protests with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake and insist they were not consulted ahead of the Gazette release.
To add more suspicion to the situation, Dissanayake has appointed his eldest son Narada Dissanayake as the Secretary of the Quality Assurance and Accreditation Committee which will govern all non-State degree awarding institutions. The committee’s main task is to assess applications from institutions, seeking degree-awarding status.
Narada Dissanayake is one of the five permanent members of the committee headed by Higher Education Ministry Secretary Sunil Jayantha Nawaratne. The other members are Additional Ministry Secretary Douglas Nanayakakra, Prof. Rohan Rajapaksa from the Ruhunu University, University Grants Commission Vice Chairman Prof. Ranjith Seneviratne and Higher Education Ministry Senior Advisor Dr. R.K.M. Ratnayake.
While the intention of the committee may be to genuinely promote quality higher education in Sri Lanka, the method does not necessarily overflow with promise. In most countries the University Grants Commission or its equivalent as a qualified and independent body evaluates the institutions and grades them according to their level of quality. This ensures that a transparent system is in place that counters the possibility of corruption and gives the student the best deal possible. The political tradition of allowing unqualified sons into important positions not only opens up the process to politicisation, it also paves the way to corruption.
Under the new regulations, the degree-awarding institutions, if they wish, have to take on the responsibility of making sure they conform to professional standards set by bodies. Interestingly Education Ministry Secretary Sunil Jayantha Nawaratne believes it is “unethical” to demand this of the institutions. Basically this could lead to students getting short-changed because they will, in addition to paying through their nose for a degree, have to spend extra time and effort making sure they meet professional standards. In a sector such as medicine, this could have dire consequences for the rest of society as well.
The Ministry seems too reliant on market forces as well as savvy parents and students who will do their homework to gauge the recognition provided to degrees that are conveyor belted by these institutions. Given the tangle the higher education system is in, the lucrative market could be a veritable magnate for unscrupulous degree-awarding institutions and the Government seems to have laid out the red carpet for them.
The Government is folding back its funding for the public university system and opening up shadowy corridors for non-State entrants. Countries around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia have proved that for nations to emerge as high income economies, they need massive investment in education. Investment that the Sri Lankan Government is capable of making and managing but prefers to delegate this responsibility, without stakeholder input, to other sources that could be dangerously unsuitable. That leaves the future at stake.
