Crisis lies in not knowing what higher education is!

by Sarath De Alwis

The crisis is not in our system of higher education. The crisis is in not knowing what higher education is. Arrogance of presumed superior knowledge of the policy makers and dogmatism of the teachers has precipitated a debate that reflects a pedantry of crisis proportions.

We do not seem to have a policy on higher education except a declared intention of the Minister to produce a new policy. The subject however calls for a public discussion. It concerns the children and the youth of the country that provides Sri Lanka the only renewable resource it has. It is in fact a subject that provokes comment by the people among whom are many with great minds.

It is therefore necessary to draw it away from becoming an endurance contest of petty polemics between the Minister of Higher Education and the university teachers.

Minister S.B. Dissanayake has stated that the demand of 6% of GDP to be allocated to education is ‘hilarious’. The Minister of Higher Education claims that the present crisis in the universities is an unjustified opposition by the academics to the proposed legislation to establish ‘mechanism for the accreditation of non-state institutions of higher education.

He has pointed out that when the Government allocation of two per cent for education is added to other expenditure of education borne by individuals and private parties, Sri Lanka spends about 5% of its GDP for education. Unfortunately it is a statement that is not supported with evidence. If indeed such evidence is available the Minister should take the nation in to his confidence and share it with us.

President Rajapaksa addressing the first convocation of the University of Vocational Technology had made some remarks that need emphasis. His observations are important because he couples modernity with tradition.

He had said that the vocational training authority bill was the first Bill to be presented by him as the Minister of Labour in 1994. It has now paved the way to take technical education to villages. He has stressed that in seeking to build a new vibrant society with modern technology they should also be aware of their own culture and traditions that placed great importance on technologies of the past.

“For profit” education providers

Sri Lanka, which introduced State funded universal free education from nursery to university, has been steadily moving towards “for profit” education providers with private free levying schools being set up almost in every city. Providing private “for profit” secondary education became an enterprise since 1977 the year when free market economics acquired the status of canonical law.

This writer is a father who at some personal cost has provided tertiary education to three children in the United Sates the home of the Washington consensus. The first instance was due to the southern insurgency in the late eighties that made student life impossible in an Olcott Buddhist school. The other two were the result of the vagaries of the professional life of the father and their obtaining reasonable grades that allowed them entry to good colleges with limited financial assistance.

When they all pursued post graduate studies in Sri Lanka it brought home to me the realisation that this country is yet capable of providing the best in terms of professional excellence if only you go looking for it.

So I begin with some respect for the universities and the teachers. However I need to emphasise my strong reservations on some vice chancellors. It is because to say it with blunt brevity I do not think it is their business to tell us how they intended to vote. Obviously they do not understand the concept of the free ballot cast in the privacy of the polling booth. Therein lays the rub.

State subsidies of public good are a matter of politics and for politicians. Health, fuel, food are concerns of people and governments. According to our traditional values education is not a public good. It is a public must. Hence compulsory universal education up to secondary level is justified. It remains sanctified territory violated no doubt with tacit approval of the state by fee levying “international schools”.

The natural consequence of private “for profit” private secondary schools are private “for profit” universities. There is no logic in providing State subsidised or State funded tertiary education to the children who pass out of those fee levying private schools. The term ‘for profit’ is here used to differentiate the post 1977 international schools from the fee levying non-profit secondary schools that refused State aid in order to retain management control when free education was introduced.

Tertiary education

We should ask ourselves why there is a demand and an agitation for private institutions that provide tertiary education. Obviously the demand exists due to two reasons.

There is first a demand for it. Secondly they offer an education product that is either not provided by the mainstream universities or not accessible to those who could pay for it but get past the filtering process of selection, due to resource allocation on a basis of social equity.

Even in passing it is necessary to refer to the eloquent silence of the first and only Prime Minister of this country who benefited both from secondary and tertiary education provided by the free education system on this issue. I think neoliberal economic thinking is bipartisan.

The expression “accreditation of non State institutions” is a euphemism for private universities. The purpose of accreditation is to enable them to grant degrees or equivalent recognition of academic achievements. The recipients use these for employment and post graduate study.

Already there are a number of such institutions that grant such qualifications on the basis of performance at examinations held under the supervision of the department of examinations or by professional institutions under royal charter in the UK or by bodies set up by an act of parliament.

The issue raised by this article is why we should not permit tertiary education to be guided by the “invisible hand” of market mechanics. Already back in Washington the consensus has been challenged. The Washington consensus has become the Washington contentious. But visiting that would enlarge the scope of this discussion.

The percentage of the GDP that a nation invests in education is a pointer to its competitiveness. The capacity to innovate and create new products, ideas and services is developed only by free thinking and inquiry. If that is not produced by the universities the present hierarchical structure places the blame at the doorstep of the University Grants Commission.

 The UGC and the Ministry of Higher Education cannot claim authority of appointing the Vice Chancellors and then hold the universities responsible for performance. Responsibility without authority is the prerogative of those with easy virtue said Rudyard Kipling.

Rationalisation

Sri Lanka is not China. It is not India. We are a small nation that need not shoulder the burden of a demographic distortion in dispensing social justice. Our numbers hold the promise of social equity instead of the perils of inequity.

Education to us is a resource that promises what we do not possess in the form of other natural resources. We are already a nation that exports skills and man power. The five hub concept which it is difficult to expand on, in this article due to space constraints is based on a knowledge centric economy.

The buzz word in free market thinking is rationalisation. The Universities should be rationalised says the Minister who finds it hilarious that anybody would wish to determine State expenditure as a percentage of GDP.

He would have been absolutely justified even if he said that the demand for 6% GDP for education has been made by a bunch of bozos provided that he indicated what percentage that he thought was reasonable to be spent on education by a State that is already subsidising fuel, providing free health in hospitals that provide teaching facilities to the State medical colleges, etc.

Certainly a private medical college that runs its own Teaching Hospital should not be opposed. There is something repugnant in using the less privileged patients in State hospitals to educate the offspring of rich parents to become doctors. It is not Marxist thinking but a Rawlasian sense of moral justice.

Andrew Feenburg writing on bridging the gap between modernity and technology says something we need to take note of. Rationalisation, he says “reduces the normative and qualitative richness of the traditional social world, exposing social reality to technical manipulation”.

I feel the same sentiments were shared by the President when he made those remarks earlier on acquiring new technology while preserving tradition.

Passions and politics

Let us separate the passions of FUTA from the Politics of the Minister. Chantal Mouffe writing on politics and passions says that among the many reasons for the near extinction of proper political perspective is “the predominance of a neo-liberal regime of globalisation and the influence of the individualistic consumer culture” that pervades our societies.

Neo liberalism is a philosophy “in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services,” says Stanely Fish the American educationist and commentator quoting Paul Treanor. Even American academia and saner counsel have started to rethink on market forces because the “invisible hand” of the market has today become a visible clenched fist. Are we having a tea party?

Education according to tradition was imparted free first on the white sand of our temples painstakingly swept by the acolyte monks with ekel brooms leaving geometric patterns. Knowledge was given freely to those who thirsted for knowledge. The universities too should take note and become relevant to our times. Let there be a debate. The discussion is on education. The personal egos involved need not deter the nation from discussing education – the essential basis of a civilisation.



(The writer is a retired airline executive. He can be reached via email [email protected].)