Unemployed graduates: Why are they there?

Dr. Siri Gamage

Several thousand unemployed graduates from Sri Lankan universities protested in Colombo recently. As they were obstructing a main road, police obtained permission from the courts to disperse the crowd of undergraduates resulting in tear gas use.

The Minister of Higher Education was reported as saying that one reason that these unemployed graduates cannot find employment is their lack of English language knowledge. It was also reported that these poor cousins of Sri Lanka’s higher education system were seeking a meeting with the President to discuss their grievances.

This incident highlights a continuing problem that the authorities in the country haven’t been able to (or rather not willing to) find enduring solutions.

Apparently, the undergraduates who follow courses in humanities and social sciences face this situation more than those who follow engineering, medicine or science subjects. The merits of an education in humanities and social sciences are recognized worldwide.

When a student learns about history, religion, society, or languages he/she is not only learning these subjects. Ideally such learning should cultivate an inquisitive mind, problem solving skills, critical thinking abilities, comparative application of ideas from the past to the present, and vice versa.

An independently thinking person with the necessary background, knowledge and skills as well as a humanistic orientation to the world carrying a worldview associated with social justice, human rights, and peace is an important person in today’s society.

A person who can see the difference between human injustices, their sources, and corrective action needed to rectify these is invaluable for a country inflicted with preferential treatment, discrimination, injustices and power politics as well as patronage based decision-making.

Has the universities in the country failed in producing graduates who have these abilities? If so, why? It is well known that the system is inflicted with practices such as rote learning.

At one of the leading universities in the country, I am aware that undergraduates do not use the library for reading books published in English. Rather they use it to read notes in Sinhala or Tamil provided by their lecturers.

The lecturers use age-old notes to ‘reproduce archaic knowledge’ that was initiated several decades ago without due regard for their applicability in today’s society.

There are some exceptions in cases where the lecturers have obtained postgraduate qualifications particularly from foreign institutions as they impart their newly acquired knowledge to students.

However, even some of these lecturers resort to using age-old notes as time passes by because the prevailing system and its loopholes allow them to consider teaching as a dispensable activity compared to other priorities such as conducting research with foreign funding, travelling between cities as some reside in the capital or provinces.

Such research often focuses on unrelated disciplines and issues. They are marginally applicable to the teaching areas of the lecturer or the department/faculty. I have heard of instances where the lecturers cancel classes for various trivial reasons, and students have to return to their residences in disappointment.

Research seem to get priority over teaching in the universities in Sri Lanka but the problem in this is that it happens at the expense of teaching rather than as simultaneous activities.

Teacher-oriented learning that is prevalent in the universities does not lend itself to cultivating the required abilities of humanities and social science graduates as described above. Universities elsewhere in the region have moved to institute newer teaching methodologies that allow ‘deep learning’ as well as ‘student-centred learning’.

Student-centred learning facilitate teaching to address social contextual issues that the students bring in to the classroom whereas under the teacher-oriented learning the teacher expects that all students in their classes are able to learn the subject equally(or students possess equal cognitive abilities).

The latter assumption is a misguided one. Students in a class have mixed abilities in cognition, comprehension, understanding, articulation of thoughts, composition and writing, doing references when the subject texts are in English. They also have social contextual pressures emanating from their class, ethnic, gender, and regional backgrounds/differences.

Those who come from middle class or upper class backgrounds bring ‘cultural capital’ to the classroom compared to those who come from working class or poor/disadvantaged backgrounds. Cultural capital includes the prior knowledge and skills, values and norms received from family backgrounds, schools and communities as well as the media.

In Australia’s universities for example there are highly developed Teaching and Learning Centres to monitor teaching performance of the lecturers and to assist them in better teaching methods via short courses.

These are a kind of in-house training for academic staff. Sri Lankan universities can benefit from such T &L Centres. However, the prevailing mindset of senior academics who believe that the acquisition of a postgraduate qualification is sufficient ground for effective teaching is a barrier existing in the university culture that administrators have to reckon with.

While postgraduate qualifications in a given field indicate higher learning by the lecturer, it does not necessarily mean the acquisition of better teaching skills. Teaching and learning has become a specific professional development area in the modern higher education systems.

Much has been talked about the mismatch between the qualifications acquired by the Sri Lankan graduates, the skills they possess or not possess such as English language knowledge, and the needs of the public and private sector.

The solutions for these issues can be three fold: 1. Teaching and Learning within universities have to be modernised by instituting T&L centres as found in developed countries such as Australia, USA, Canada, and UK. These centres will then monitor the teaching performance by the lecturers on a voluntary basis.

These performances, which are independently assessed, should be utilized in the lecturer promotions process. Student-centred teaching methods need to be expanded in the system of higher education with the assistance of such centres.

I am aware that some years ago, universities in the country introduced continuing assessment procedures - signalling a change from the exam-oriented system. This is a good step. Next step is to go the extra mile as described above.

For the graduates coming out from the universities, a crash course can be introduced to inculcate the skills required by the employers. For example, a six-month ‘work-ready program’ that gives English language skills, IT skills, and Cross-cultural Communication skills (among others) can be provided by the State. Speakers from various public and private agencies can be brought in to supplement the in-house lecturers from different faculties.

A voluntary scheme of work in various public and private institutions lasting from six months to a year can be introduced for the unemployed graduates. A living allowance should be organised for these people to cover their food, transport and accommodation costs.

However, graduates should be encouraged to do part time work elsewhere and find at least half of their living costs. Companies and other institutions should be encouraged to work closely with universities to organise such voluntary work programs. Their representatives should visit university campuses annually to select the candidates for such work.

These measures can be very useful in addressing the thorny issue of unemployed graduates. Not providing acceptable solutions to the issue of their unemployment can only lead these young people with a lot of legitimate aspirations to self-destroying violent paths.

While these are important measures the main problem lies with the provision of employment in the State run institutions on the basis of recommendations made by influential politicians.

Sri Lanka needs to do better. I do not think that such betterment can be achieved without a wholesale change in the ‘political culture and system of governance’ as I have pointed out in my earlier contributions to The Asian Tribune.

The writer is Senior Lecturer at the University of New England, Australia.
Asian Tribune