The business of education

Education, it seems, has become a huge business. The global education market is worth billions of dollars. Various countries are literally trampling over each other to grab a share of the lucrative education market.

Countries such as the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and our neighbour India are in the forefront of this overseas education revolution.

Even a casual glance through this newspaper's editorial and advertising pages reveals dozens of opportunities for studying abroad. Education fairs, where prospective students can visit stalls of foreign universities and business colleges for on-the-spot admission interviews and collect brochures, have become very popular. Individual universities also hold seminars and interviews here.

Overseas education has its plus points for those who have the means. Education at foreign universities is not frequently punctured by student demonstrations and closures, which are rather common here. Moreover, there is always the possibility of becoming a permanent citizen of that country. Many countries do not admit this publicly, but they are keen to absorb qualified professionals and academics to their population.

From our viewpoint, foreign education does mean a huge flow of foreign exchange out of the country. Unfortunately, this is one factor that those opposed to establishing private universities and degree awarding institutions here fail to realise.

If Sri Lanka has world class private or semi-private universities, some of the affluent students are likely to attend them, saving a considerable amount of foreign exchange. We will also be able to attract a considerable number of students from other countries in the region, thus earning foreign exchange.

One must also not forget that only around 16,000 students are enroled at State universities annually whereas thousands more who qualify are left in the lurch. Alternative degree awarding institutions will also give at least some of them the opportunity of pursuing higher studies locally.

Nevertheless, private educational institutions alone will not cure the maladies in the education sector. The mushrooming 'international schools' are an example. They used to be confined to the Western Province, but they have now expanded to cover the whole country. Most of these schools are established under the Companies Act, leaving little leeway for State educationists to intervene. It is difficult to measure their output in qualitative terms as there are no set standards.

International or local, public or private, educational institutions must ultimately cater to the employment market. This is one of the aims of the current education reforms. All these years, our educational system has been harping on archaic theory-based curricula which have little or no bearing on daily life.

Education was not geared to meet the challenges of the job market. Saturday and Sunday newspapers are saturated with employment vacancies, but we hear that thousands of graduates and school leavers are languishing without jobs. The mismatch is crystal clear: it is time our schools and universities produced persons who are capable of filling these real-world positions.

Sri Lanka has always shone on the world education map thanks to its free education policy which successive Governments have continued. Unfounded fears have been raised that the entire education sector would be privatised. But an infusion of properly regulated private sector entities to the education sector will be a boon, not a bane.