Education should be changed to suit business environment

Chandra Embuldeniya

EDUCATION: The editorial under the caption ‘Blighted seats of learning’ on Daily News (July 11) enunciates a perfect way to move forward eradicating higher education malaise. The editorial is based on the assessment made by Prof. Wiswa Warnapala, Minister of Higher Education on the perpetual troubles facing our university education system.

It presents an accurate assessment of the situation and the only solution to many of our problems in brief. The solution I believe is most crucial for future development of our nation. The solution to higher education malaise would encapsulate the whole gamut of economic development of the nation and revitalize it.

In my brief outline below, I intend bringing out a few illustrations of experiences gained from my association with the higher education sector in Sri Lanka to justify the editor’s conclusions. Most of our university students are coerced to become anti social by a handful of politically driven persons who are aiming for power in future.

The aim of these persons is to create joblessness and keep the country underdeveloped until they come to power. They want to create a large base of government employees obliging to their whims while someday perhaps they would hold the entire country to ransom by crippling government services.

Their strategic aim is to disable the majority students so as not to fit into the engine of growth, the private sector, with skills and knowledge needed. They deprive the country of the spirit and skills needed for innovations to add value to our resources.

Under the guise of free education, 17 per cent of the cohort of qualified students enters the university system each year while 83 per cent are deprived of a convenient opportunity to earn a degree with the blessings of the State.

The small number that gets into the university are so coerced into being docile anti social and herded into dancing to a rhythm that suits the aspirations of even a smaller group of anti social elements at the expense of taxpayer.

The parents are unaware and even if they are aware, they cannot respond due to fears and helplessness. It is time we realise the nation’s development imperatives to rectify the malaise affecting higher education.

A nation has to depend on a group of pioneering people who are knowledgeable in technology, science, engineering, medicine, humanities and fine arts to take us to a higher level of value addition to the economic resources of our country. It demands a spirit of technological and business innovation and enterprise, just as many other nations have seen during their development process.

This means the pioneers have to emerge from society including academia, business persons, politicians, artists and media persons. All these people begin as students some day until they take up pioneering roles in innovation and development activity.

This process would become possible only if students are ready to learn and allow others to learn in an environment conducive for such activity. Our universities could not provide such an environment due to the violent student agitations and harassment of the spirited innocents.

The violence is brought about by a few well-trained individuals who are perhaps led by paid activists to create instability. Mostly, these are activists driven by political groups motivated to take power in the country as happened in the past.

It is so sad that the persons leading this movement in the country are using their craft to subvert the young minds and push their wily theories and approaches aiming to destabilize universities. Strategies adopted by the universities to produce a learned citizenry are neutralized effectively by these anti social elements.

Unaware

As the editorial implies the parents are unaware of what is going on in the universities. Even if they knew, they are unable to stop the rot because the innocent want to stay aloof to the problem fearing reprisals.

It is important for every parent to know the strategies adopted by these enemies of society. They first identify the students who have parental problems or other debilitating problems from their school days.

Then these young men and women are drawn in tactfully through various means where they are trained on how to lead and take over. The training begins at the school. As expected, a few of these trained students find their way into the universities.

Once they are in the university, the process is very swift with each hand picked one being given a role to play equipped with mobile phones and allowances for participation and activism. Their main task is to identify issues that present opportunities for agitation.

They also play roles in organising students for various occasions with cultural, religious and social importance. Ragging is one of the principal means of pacifying and silencing students and establishing dominance over any alternate movements. With these activities, they identify themselves as leaders and wait for their turn.

Typically, these issues are dealt by administrations in universities in a manner keeping with policy and in keeping with available resources. Principal issues are hostels, accommodation, food, and a host of welfare issues. Sometimes issues related to academic, religious and social issues arise.

These students expect everything to be done according to their dictates to the authorities. No matter how logical is the action proposed by the university they would not stop short of agitation.

Even when they know that, the authorities are working on solutions they take it upon themselves to agitate to give the impression as if the solutions are being brought about due to their agitation. They would use these issues to silence those other students wishing to develop a future with positive action.

Anti - social

It is a prime objective of these anti social student elements to create an environment for depriving students passing out getting any lucrative jobs particularly in the private sector.

As a result, our students passing from universities prefer government jobs promising pensions and permanency even if salaries are half the private sectors offering. They prefer to work less typical for the public sector as opposed to hard work one has to produce in the private sector.

They want to draw students onto a platform to participate in ‘Satyagraha’ or ‘Fasting’ to get attention to issues including joblessness and persuade governments to give them any job however unproductive it may be.

The pattern of agitations will prolong after securing jobs to enhance salaries, then creating high salary scales, promotions etc. This process carves out a niche in an unproductive jobless society for the perpetrators of this anti social movement representing themselves as the sole liberators of the educated masses.

Private sector is the acclaimed engine of growth in a country. These students have no perception of an engine of growth. They think government is the engine of production. Government produces various statutory services and it is seemingly trying hard to improve quality, efficiency, productivity and finally, effectiveness of their services.

However, do they produce goods? I am afraid not. Whenever and wherever governments get into the kind of production for most common markets the governments have failed and been a cost to society than a catalyst for development.

Free education

This trend eventually fills up jobs in a country where high production and productivity are needed with docile pen pushers producing no outcomes of a high value. These are passengers in an economy already burdened with a load of enemies of various colours and shapes. We have not sufficiently understood or taken counter action against these enemies.

We should find ways of getting them to put their shoulder to the wheel rather than allowing them to sit comfortably with pension bearing jobs at taxpayers’ expense. Behind all this is our education system producing such inert people offensive to society. Unless we stop this now we are going to add greater inefficiency at the government level.

Let free education continue but let the opportunity be given to those parents who want children educated to their satisfaction to have a choice. The parents have a choice when children are schooling.

They choose to give private tuition and nowadays many parents try to send children to private schools and do not worry about the local university, as they seem to have lost confidence in this failing system. These parents prefer their children doing some technical education or professional education.

As such, freedom of education is practised but free education is a myth. Because we believe in this myth, we have made our country one of the poorest, while most other nations in the region have moved far ahead and continuing to progress economically.

The entire nation is being held to ransom by a handful of these wily people holding sway in higher education sector. These anti social elements are getting free education at government expense to hold the country to ransom.

It is clear from statistics that around 130,000 qualify to gain admissions to our universities although we receive only around 35,000 applications expecting to gain admissions. It is an equivalent of 27 per cent. Finally, less than 20,000 are selected. Thus, only 16 per cent of the qualified are getting a place in the university system under free education.

The survival number is less due universities carrying many unfilled vacancies due to dropouts. This number is much smaller when compared with the actual number sitting A/Levels. What happens to the balance 84 per cent who are also qualified to have a university education?

They blame this free education. At least if those passing out from the universities through this process become so good then our country should flourish with knowledgeable and skillful people.

This is not happening as long as the system is held to ransom by the anti social elements. The business enterprises representing the engine of growth have found majority of these graduates not so attractive to their purpose of running a factory or a commercial venture.

They can only find places in a government institution because the governments are always under political pressure to provide jobs even if there are no jobs.

This has to stop and education must be changed to suit the business environment and allow investments to attract into the country to employ our graduates. How can this happen unless we produce them meaningfully and deliberately. No matter what the universities try to do, they will not allow this to happen.

Their wily strategy is to keep the country poor, the graduates unemployed, so that they can appeal to a small group of people to take them to parliament in the belief that a utopia will arise from such politics.

(The writer is the Past President of the National Chamber of Commerce and Vice Chancellor, Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka)