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The convocation address delivered by Prof. Swarna Jayaweera on 'the role of universities in national and regional development' at the general convocation - 2003 of the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka held at BMICH on 11th December, 2003.

Amparai: fast developing

I am very privileged to speak on the occasion of the second Convocation of the South Eastern University and to greet its new graduates.

I am particularly happy that after over four decades of association with the two oldest universities in the country and subsequently, with a different structure, the Open University, I have now the opportunity to engage in the stimulating exercise of reflecting on the role of universities in the context of the growth and development of a relatively new university.

A new university has a vista of opportunities and, I hope, untrammelled space for change. In its fledging status, your university is not bound by sacrosanct traditions. It has few vested interests to contend with, no legacy of years of mistakes to undo, no problems rooted in the distant past to unravel. Hopefully, rigidity would not have set in as yet, innovations are not looked at askance, and staff and students have some leeway to create their own visions.

At the same time a new university faces enormous challenges. It has to develop its human resources by recruiting quality staff and giving priority to staff development. It has to provide adequate infrastructure to ensure a conducive environment for the maximisation of the potential of its students and staff. But the most important challenge is to conceptualise a vision and role that will then permeate its multi faceted activities and its student life. In these tasks the university will confront challenges posed by contextual factors, as no institutions can operate in a vacuum.

The literature on universities, including several international publications and research, reiterates the concern that higher education is in a crisis all over the world. The crisis in economically developing countries is compounded by resource constraints that are exacerbated in an unequal international economic environment, buffeted further by one-way process of globalisation.

Sri Lanka has its own horrendous crisis of ethnic and social tensions, armed conflict, a climate of violence and political instability, and widespread erosion of values. Universities are drawn into this vortex of disaster and are compelled to function in a volatile environment.

Within the universities, multiplicities of factors have resulted in a crisis of declining academic standards, minimal resources and youth unrest. Universities need to meet the aspirations of their students for upward career mobility.

They must cope with the frustrations of youth, trapped in a spectre of unemployment, in a labour market with a shrinking niche in the public service and a formidable private sector. Their anger has mounted with their perceptions of injustice in an environment that sets a low premium on merit and is vulnerable to extraneous pressures such as politicisation.

The resentment that was documented in the report of the Youth Commission in 1990 has not been reduced as these external forces have continued to operate in the ensuing decade. There has been a loss of confidence in universities, reflected in the exodus of students from families with some resources to universities overseas or to alternative avenues of tertiary education within the country.

South Eastern University shares these travails and has to evolve strategies to reclaim the status of universities in national life. In addition, the University has its own specific problems originating from its brief history and its location in a district that has been affected by the ethnic conflict and its spill over to continuing communal tensions. It has also to transcend the strong regional flavour associated with its location and student composition, to become in public perceptions, a national university in conformity with the policy that all universities in this country are national universities, irrespective of their locations.

The South Eastern University has to face a dual challenge to function as a National University but also to respond to local needs, and in this process to achieve a harmonious balance of interests, a challenge that the Peradeniya University and the Colombo based Universities for instance, do not appear to have confronted.

The University community has to examine the role of the university critically, within this framework of their dual responsibilities.

It is appropriate that the university makes a problem analysis or needs analysis of the district. Ampara is not a low-income district, as compared for instance, with its neighbour, the Moneragala district. But it has to develop its economic potential and to make vast strides in social development. Poor school facilities and deficits in teacher cadre are a legacy of the past.

Educational participation and retention rates and literacy levels and other social indicators are relatively low as compared with national averages, and gender equality is still to be achieved. But the university has also links with a rich Islamic tradition.

In this context the University has the potential to function as a catalyst in the development of the district. Besides its regular academic programmes and student activities, it can reach out to marginal communities in the district who are the victims of social exclusion.

This surely is in consonance with Islamic traditions that underpin social relations. But there are also other ethnic groups that belong to the district, and the University can activate a process of nation building in its microcosm and in the community. It can innovate new mechanisms of capacity building of other institutions, organise extension courses and provide space for staff and students and its graduates, such as those who are emerging from its portals today, to engage in participatory community projects.

Parochialism and inbreeding has to be resisted, as it will limit the scope and the quality of your contribution. Hence the university has to look beyond the boundaries of the district and to promote networks with other groups from different cultures and from other locations.

In an environment of rapidly changing technology, it can harness information and communication technology to establish nation-wide and international contacts that will enrich the quality of life of students and enhance their life chances and their contribution to national development.

Inasmuch as regional or community development and national development are not mutually exclusive activities, universities can contribute to both without the pitfalls of a dichotomy of interests or conflictual roles.

It is of paramount importance that the South Eastern University should in its early and formative years, and in its location far from the metropolis, meet its dual challenge effectively by defining and internalising its role as a national university. And it is this role that is also applicable to all universities in this country that I wish to place before you.

Sri Lanka's universities have extended in number and orientation from the conceptualisation of an Oxbridge on the Mahaweli. Nurturing a narrow elite, to thirteen universities of diverse origins, which are all national universities. These universities need to transcend ethnic, religious and socio-economic differences in a common endeavour to achieve excellence in a framework of human development and national goals.

The South Eastern University has therefore to give priority to define its multi-dimensional role as a national university. I should like to refer briefly to four interrelated facets of this role that indicate the complexity of its tasks. Firstly, universities need to develop into national centres of learning, of research, applied research and interactive and stimulating learning-teaching experiences.

They have not merely to transmit knowledge but also to stimulate the creation of knowledge, and despite the pressures of a knowledge driven, market oriented and politicised society, to endeavour to achieve the quintessence of a university education, creativity, holistic personal development, individual and national excellence and most importantly, academic freedom. They must, in today's world, for instance, strive to use the rapid pace of globalisation, without being swept off their feet and succumbing to homogenisation, to bridge the gap between development and under development, achievement and under achievement, including the widening digital divide.

It follows therefore that universities are not vocational institutions. In their multi-dimensional role, however, they have a second function, to promote national economic growth and development, and to satisfy the aspirations of their students for upward mobility within or outside their familiar terrain, in any part of the country, and in any selected path to excellence.

They must diversify their courses and ensure flexibility to respond to the economic imperatives of a changing labour market, without sacrificing the broader aims of university education. They need to produce professionals of high calibre in all spheres of activity - scientists and technologists in pioneering and developing growth areas in the agriculture, industry and service sectors including information and communication technology, social scientists engaged in the much needed tasks of social, economic and political analysis, the catalysts in the humanities who nurture the creative and performing arts, and teachers in all disciplines as agents of change in the education system.

The universities need also to integrate in all their courses and activities, generic skills such as critical and divergent thinking, problem solving, initiative, decision-making, responsibility, co-operative team work and effective communication that are necessary to function successfully in any occupation or role in the economy and society. It is these personality characteristics that employers in the private sector complain that university graduates lack, a criticism that affects their employability adversely.

Thirdly, National Universities need to respond to a wide range of social concerns that encompass, for instance, the persistent incidence of poverty and the pauperisation of resourceless families and communities, inequitable socio-economic and gender relations, consumerism, and the erosion of values and ethical behaviourial norms. In Sri Lanka's multi-cultural society, and in the context of the emotive issues and tensions that assail the social fabric and create instability, universities have a special role in promoting national harmony and unity. As apex institutions that nurture potential leaders and activists, their social composition needs to reflect, at least to some degree, the contours of a plural society.

Their programmes need to build bridges between cultures in order to pre-empt fissiparous tendencies and to resolve conflicts, both within the own domains and in the macro environment.

The respect for cultural diversity, the mutual understanding and appreciation of different cultures, and concern for human rights that are sadly lacking today but that universities can promote, will be part of the educational legacy of their graduates wherever they live and work. The South Eastern University has a unique opportunity in this respect to facilitate social cohesion and national unity in the midst of diversity and to reduce tensions despite pressures created by endemic conflict and violence in its region and in the national scene.

It is perhaps an oversimplification to state fourtly, that national universities produce potential national leaders. Nevertheless, university students are a minuscule elite of 2% to 3% of an age cohort who have been tested at many levels overcome these hurdles and emerged as a perceived intellectual elite. A national university, however small in size, or young in years as is the South Eastern University, has the responsibility of nurturing potential political, social, professional and business leaders, the 'captains of industry' and the creators of cultural renewal.

If the universities fail, and the leaders they produce, fail in their tasks, society flounders in a morass of political chaos, social malaise or unrest and economic stagnation.

If the universities fail, their graduates functioning in any capacity and at any level, tend to lose their sense of direction and the values that could empower them to improve their own quality of life and that of society.

National universities therefore need to enrich national development by building into their curriculum, knowledge, skills and attitudes that, to reiterate, will stimulate creativity, lateral thinking, initiative, problem solving, decision-making and responsibility.

Further, they should develop in their students a social conscience, an awareness of social justice, democratic relationships and human values such as integrity, honesty, and respect for human dignity, and a non-violent approach to resolving differences. These attributes of a well balanced person enhances the quality of life in the immediate environment of the university and the macrocosm of the country, which in turn impinges on universities and their students in cyclic waves of action and reaction.

I would envisage that in responding to these multifaceted needs, universities equip their students with capabilities, attitudes and values that empower them to meet with confidence the challenges they will face in the larger and complex world they will enter, to examine the forces and demands that confront them perceptively and in a spirit of critical inquiry, and to continue 'learning to learn'.

I hope the graduates of the South Eastern University who are receiving their degrees today, have been stimulated by their apprenticeship for life in their university years, and that they have acquired a Sri Lankan identity that overarches the length and breadth of this country.

I congratulate them and wish them well in all their endeavours as responsible members of families, communities, professions, and the larger society in which they will work and live in the years ahead.

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