Private sector and the higher education

The Moving finger by Lionel Wijesiri

EDUCATIOIN: For two decades, worldwide enrolment growth in higher education has exceeded the most optimistic forecasts. A milestone of 100 million enrolments was passed some years ago, and an earlier forecast of 120 million students by 2020 may be reached by 2010.

Take one example, Malaysia. It plans to increase enrolments in higher education by 166 percent in the next four years, from 600,000 to 1.6 million, to achieve university participation rates similar to those of developed nations. Growth has been rapid in other developing countries as well.

The World Bank, for instance, has until recently discouraged countries from investing in higher education; instead it has urged them to focus their efforts on basic education, which the bank saw as having greater development benefits.

Today such agencies generally acknowledge that an education system is an integrated whole, requiring attention at all levels. This has created a major catch-up challenge for higher education in developing countries.

Undoubtedly, tens of millions of young adults in the third world will be seeking post-secondary education in the coming years.

Sri Lanka also faces the same plight. How can we, as a developing nation, respond to this massive demand?

In our country, by tradition, Government controls public goods like emergency services and defence in order to extend their benefits to all citizens. But how far should the principle of public control apply to education?

History reveals that private bodies, notably religious organisations, societies and foundations, were providing higher education long before our governments took an interest in doing so. The purpose of state involvement, when it came, was to make higher education truly a public good by widening access to it.

However, in this era of lifelong learning is there any way that the Government can provide, at no cost, all the higher education that people will need? It is a proven fact that no government, even in the developed countries, will have enough money and other resources to fund the higher education provision (without compromising the quality).

So the choice is between a public-sector monopoly giving inadequate provision or drawing on both public and private sectors to meet the demand.

This is a dilemma for governments in many developing countries, including ours, which have relied solely on the first option but now realize that to do so is a serious drag on national development.

How can we, as a developing country take advantage of private higher education? The answer boils down to achieving a balance between accessibility for students and assurance of quality, along with reasonable returns for the investor in for - profit institutions.

If you argue that government should monitor and regulate higher education, rather then provide it, then logically you must accept a role for governments in regulation and quality assurance.

Yet, the heart of the issue is fees. Fees are a special problem for a third-world country like ours that has made higher education free - that is, totally subsidized by the state - in the days when only a tiny proportion of the population was expected to go to university.

At that time, entry to higher education was highly competitive, but many citizens believed - and still believe - that the combination of competitive admissions and free education would produce equitable participation in higher education from all socio-economic groups.

Abundant research now shows that this is simply not true. The socio-economic profile of students in countries that charge fees while providing scholarships and loans for poorer students is more broadly based than in those that do not charge fees. This is a very important finding, and one that governments are only gradually finding the courage to act on.

Take the case of Mauritius. As is common in many developing countries, the University of Mauritius charges no fees. However, the government of Mauritius has pulled off the remarkable coup of starting a second university, where fees are charged.

None of the island's volcanoes erupted in protest, which means that the precedent of charging fees is set for future new universities.

In Sri Lanka, one of the grouses against privatisation is its market-orientation. Some feel that "commodification" of education may lead to excessive emphasis on skill, employment and corporate-oriented education at the cost of basic sciences and the vast pool of traditional knowledge, thereby creating an imbalance among various streams of learning.

It is true that the private sector would tend to first focus on areas where there is high demand, areas with emphasis on skills, employment (engineering, medicine etc.) and corporate-oriented education (like Management, Law, Finance etc.).

Rather than citing that as an excuse to keep the corporate sector involvement to the minimum, the State can address the demand in these areas to the maximum by their own universities.

Some educationists seem to be so steeped in dogma about the role of the State and the role of the private sector that they are losing sight of the ends (providing education for all) and getting caught up with the means (keeping the private sector out and letting only the State do everything at its own pace, even if it means the objective is becoming unattainable).

They should remember that we left this mindset behind us when the economy was liberalized decades ago but it still continues to haunt them in the education sector.