Archives

by Prof. Bertram Bastiampillai

Year after year, since the last three decades or so, universities in Sri Lanka have been closed from time to time during the academic year. In the early 1950s the University of Ceylon, then the only university functioned on a relatively regular basis. By the end of the fifties, and at the beginning of the sixties two pirivenas were transformed into the Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara Universities.

Then in the 1970s, there was a single university recreated, again with different campuses, one Vice Chancellor of the Uuiversity and Presidents in the campuses. This folly of an experiment ended in 1977 and again there were only universities, and soon they proliferated. The degrees awarded by the older single university's campuses in the seventies not readily acceptable as worthwhile.

However the quality of tertiary education sharply declined even though universities increased. Introduction of instruction in English was replaced overnight in the sixties with teaching in Sinhala or Tamil since teaching in schools had been conducted already in the vernacular. The entering student was often poorly equipped with the background or learning to follow much of what was taught in the universities because they had not read the information available in English and could not do so even in regard to required reference reading while being an undergraduate. They lagged behind the better English educated from teaching schools.

Another cause for the lowering of the quality of acquirement or attainment in education in the university lay in the decline in the quality of university teachers which grew worse with years, and remains so even now.

All foreign teachers moved out when the media of instruction were changed into Sinhalese and Tamil. Their knowledge and experience never benefited the new Swabasha versed undergraduate. Replacements of the teachers loss and newly needed teachers who could teach in Sinhala and Tamil had to be recruited in numbers.

These new personnel, at least some of them, knew more of Sinhalese and Tamil and less of the subject they need to teach in the universities. Naturally, with the depression in the quality of teaching, most undergraduates were taught inadequately and owing to their inability to read in English they learned less and less. They were of lower standards compared to their earlier predecessors.

In these years there grew a bulge in admissions to the universities. Politicians pushed for more and more to be taken into universities. Lecture rooms were overfilled, laboratories were packed and contact between teachers and students grew remote and often there was no contact at all between student and the mentor became impersonal in delivery and there existed no dialogue between student and teacher.

The lecturer found often that he had more than a manageable number in tutorial classes. Some classrooms were stretched to house more than forty to fifty in a tutorial class. No discussion of assignments or critical evaluation of tutorial essays could take place. The tutorial became another lecture like exposition and lecturers, if they ever did, merely graded submitted tutorial essays while most others paid no heed to written assignments.

The collapse of the tutorial classes system where in undergraduates were sharply guided how to answer questions or sole problems broke down beneath the sheer weight of student numbers. As a result performance of undergraduates at examinations suffered a loss of quality in their knowledge, often they were monotonous with ill digested notes gorged out.

There was also with the passage of years a remarkable lowering of the standard and competence of the teaching staff in the many universities.

With the number of universities increasing, the few well-equipped teachers in their quest for promotions migrated from one university to another in search of quick elevation. A senior lecturer from one institution for instance moved into another establishment in the quest of a Professorship, likewise an Associate Professor would shift to another university when a professor's post fall vacant. Similarly, at the threshold of a university's academic staff intake the recruitment was compulsorily forced to comprise lower qualified or less proficient staff members.

A number of universities vied with one another to obtain teachers, those with first class degrees or second class (upper) degrees opted to join the staff in more esteemed prime universities while the other comparatively unpopular universities had to make do with second lower class or classless graduates. Consequently staffing suffered in quality in quite a few of the new universities in provinces and districts.

(To be continued)

www.crescat.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright © 2003 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager