Expansion of Technical Education - Need of the Hour

It is under this agreement that Sri Lanka is receiving financial assistance to develop Sri Lanka's system of technical education which, with an innovative package of policies initiated by the Ministry of Higher Education, is to be modernized and developed with a view to contributing to the process of economic development of Sri Lanka.

The speech delivered by Higher Education Minister Prof. Wiswa Warnapala on the occasion of signing a contract between the Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education with Austria and Netherlands for the enhancement of technical education in Sri Lanka on June 9.

Today, Sri Lanka is entering into a historic agreement with two countries in Europe, Austria and Netherlands, both of whom are members of the European Union.

It is under this agreement that Sri Lanka is receiving financial assistance to develop Sri Lanka's system of technical education which, with an innovative package of policies initiated by the Ministry of Higher Education, is to be modernized and developed with a view to contributing to the process of economic development of Sri Lanka.

Free education

Sri Lanka is one country in this part of the world, which has a comparatively stable and developed human resource base which came into existence on the basis of the social demand model of education. It is this model which guaranteed equality of opportunity in education. It was on the basis of this model of education that education was made free from kindergarten to the University.

Under this scheme, educational opportunities were expanded and a network of secondary schools began to produce several thousands of qualified men and women who were needed to be provided with educational opportunities in tertiary education institutions.

Though the Universities expanded in response to the impact of the social demand model of education, they could not provide access to all those aspirants who aspired to get into the system.

Even this year, Universities can provide places to only 20,204 students out of nearly 100,000 qualified to enter the Universities, and this, apart from a challenge, is a major imbalance in the system of higher education, and it is this fundamental factor, the lack of access to a large number of students, which compelled us to look for new strategies and initiatives in the area of Higher Education Policy, which, through the assistance of the World Bank, is being newly formulated with a view to enhancing the quality of undergraduate education in the Universities.

Learning culture

The quality of undergraduate education has declined in the last several decades purely due to the absence of a learning culture in the Universities, and the responsibility for this decline is entirely due to the follies of the undergraduate community, whose intellectual competencies have been stifled by a group of agitation-oriented and politically motivated students linked to a pseudo-Marxist fascist oriented political party whose immature leadership still derives political inspiration from the remnants of a failed insurrection.

I do not want to call them revolutionaries or Marxists, because they do not fit into that mould because their ideology was a hotch-potch of all ideologies similar to that of a fascist putsch.

In my view, through a realistic policy package, we can still salvage the Universities from this menace and it is through an eradication of this menace that the country can convert the Universities and other institutions of higher learning into centres of learning, though which an intellectual culture could be restored in the Universities.

It is here in this context that we need to look at the Technical Education sector in Sri Lanka. Though the Universities expanded in the last 50 years or so, there was no corresponding change in the field of Technical Education.

It was primarily due the fact that policy makers, specially those in the sphere of Higher Education, were obsessed with the need to expand the Universities system, and the reason was that the University system, since 1921 and 1942, remained an elitist institution.

Technical College

Though a Technical College came to be established in 1890, it remained confined to Colombo without much expansion to provide more opportunities to those men and women who came out of the large network of secondary schools.

No attempt was made to diversify the system of tertiary education with a view to expanding access, and the Universities began producing un-employable graduates. Employability was not given priority, because of which a serious situation has arisen and it is a major burden on the State.

If a diversification had been made at the correct time, placing more emphasis on technical education which was recommended by the Ten Year Plan in 1957 and the Technical Education Commission of 1962, the situation which we face today with a mass of unemployable graduates would not have arisen , and the intellectual community as well as the policy makers, including the mandarins in the public bureaucracy have to be blamed for the failure to diversify the system with more emphasis on technical education.

Sri Lanka, at one stage, lacked qualified middle level technical personnel, and this created several strains and stresses in the process of economic development. Industry needed such personnel and non- University institutions can help meet the demand for improved access.

Such institutions are perceived to be second rate, and we should not encourage such perceptions to develop within the system. In the developed countries, the public technical Institutes play a vital role in providing additional access and a large number of students prefer to choose such an Institute instead of a University purely because of the fact that only entry into such an Institute would guarantee employment.

Colonial policy

The Ceylon Technical College, which was established in 1893 and it functioned as a Government Department; the University College, established in 1921, too functioned as a Government Department. This was an aspect of colonial policy; in other words, education and technical education came to be administrated by the colonial bureaucracy whose objectives were limited.

Though this Technical College underwent some reforms in 1906, it still remained the only institution engaged in providing trained skilled personnel to a couple of Technical Departments; for instance such Departments as Railways, Irrigation and Public Works were provided with such skilled personnel.

It was an institution with a limited function, and in 1933, under another set of reforms, its functions were expanded and opportunities were provided for those who wanted to obtain external engineering degrees from the University of London.

This function remained the major focus of the Ceylon Technical College till the Faculty of Engineering was created in 1950; though the Technical College remained in the original mould, no attempt was made to expand its activities. It was only in the sixties that a network of Technical Colleges came to be established and they began training young men in crafts and trades.

Vocational training

This, in my view, was insufficient a structure though it afforded opportunities to school leavers from the secondary schools in the country. In the meantime a Vocational Authority was established to provide vocational training. But there was no Higher Technological Institute which can undertake training of personnel who can respond flexibly to the demands of the labour market.

In the context of the developmental needs of the country, such middle level technical personnel was needed, and the training needs to be based on multi-disciplinary programmes in various technical fields.

The Peoples Alliance Government 1994-2000, with which I was associated as the Deputy Minister of Higher Education, wanted to set up a Higher Technological Institute on the assumption that such an Institute is more likely than a traditional University to produce the type of skills led labour demanded in a market economy.

For instance, in Singapore, the employment prospectus of graduates of such Institutes are so good that many talented students seek entry into such polytechnics rather than the regular academic programmes of the Universities.

In the engineering field, for instance a new distinction has appeared between 'engineering scientists' and 'applied engineers'. As you know the former are involved in more abstract work whereas the latter are involved in jobs in the production process.

Our objective was the same in establishing the SLIATE and it was to function as an umbrella organization under which a network of Technical Colleges would function in the different areas of the country.

Today we have 18 such Colleges, providing additional educational opportunities to the secondary school leavers, and those who fail to get into the formal University system are given access; it has served a very useful purpose in providing access and it is one of the major institutions of learning in the non- University tertiary sector.

Development process

The SLIATE was established to modernize the entire technical education sector in the country and this, to a certain extent, remained under-funded due to various factors and constraints.

The country, and primarily its policy-makers, are now alive to the need to expand the SLIATE and its associated Colleges as it is capable of providing the required skilled persons who can contribute immensely to the development process in the country, and with the agreements, which we are entering into with Austria and the Netherlands, I am sure that the assistance, which they give us, would help us to develop SLIATE into a national centre of excellence in the field of technical education.

In the initial phase, Mattakkuliya and Labuduwa Colleges are to be upgraded with a view to converting them into well-equipped Colleges of Technology. The whole package of assistance is to provide support to an integrated scheme of development, according to which, such things as infra-structure development, supply of advanced equipment and teacher training are given priority.

Once this package of policies is implemented fully and effectively, it is my sincere hope that SLIATE would emerge as a major institution of learning in the field of technical education, and our country, at this stage of development amidst a massive terrorist threat to our stability, can reap the benefits of this assistance by establishing a strong base in skills development.

Higher Education Policy

I need to speak a couple of words on the need to evolve a realistic and development-oriented Higher Education Policy for Sri Lanka. The Annual Report of the Central Bank has made a number of valuable comments on the system of Higher Education.

The country needs a new Higher Education system in order to convert our institutions of learning into globally recognized centres of learning. Sri Lanka needs to establish higher educational institutions of global excellence in order to move in the direction of a knowledge driven economy.

In India, National Knowledge Commission has suggested a number of fundamental reforms with a view to developing their institutions into globally recognized institutions of learning. One view is that privatization of higher education does not necessarily lead to greater competition among institutions leading to higher academic standards.

In India, the view is that the private players have not shown an interest in the notion of public service as the basic concept of promoting better and relevant higher education. The criticism is that private education is a mediocre commercial activity that needs radical reforms.

The accepted view is that the new opportunities for growth and development of education needs to be based on the principles of public service, and any reforms in our sector too needs to be based on this principle.

This, however, doest not mean that the role of the private sector is not being appreciated and it needs to be carefully thought in a polity where free education is rooted in the country's political culture.

Financial commitments

It is therefore necessary to recognize the fact that whether Sri Lanka is in a position to continue to make massive financial commitments needed to maintain a wholly State funded University system and sustain internationally reputed institutions of higher learning.

This is a matter which has to be carefully examined in the context of the need to diversify and enhance the quality of undergraduate education in Sri Lanka. Our immediate needs are based on the following: Sri Lanka needs to expand the access, through greater choices in the selection of courses, modes of learning and greater participation of alternate institutions.

The State University should remain the principal player, and reforms should encourage a learning culture that is responsive to the needs of employment and development of skills immediately required for development.

In other words, the learning culture should be made responsive to the national needs, thereby helping Sri Lanka to meet the global challenges. There is an immediate need to enhance the quality and standards of education provided by the higher educational institutions; it is here that the quality of both undergraduate education and external degree programmes need to be enhanced.

In order to maintain quality, quality assurance methods and formulas have to be devised; the institutions outside the State sector must come under strict regulations and standards.

Needs a programme to evaluate and enhance the quality of teaching; effectiveness of both teaching and research and learning should be enhanced and then only a learning culture and a research culture could be restored in the Universities.

Global University

Our strategy is to plan reforms on the basis of the above in order to help our Universities to become globally-accepted players, which means, in the context of the international competition, the University should become a global University.

Prof. Richard Levine of the University of Yale, once said that ' the creation of the global University is a revolutionary development signalling distinct changes in the substance of teaching and research, the demographic characteristics of students and scholars, the scope and breadth of external collaborations, and the engagement of the University with new audiences'.

In other words, the concept of the global university must take into consideration such things as curriculum development and a research agenda that can become a part of a world phenomenon.

The central focus of reforms on higher education should address this issue of the concept of the global University, and, and our reforms, through a new set of strategies and initiatives, would definitely address this issue with a view to making providers of internationally recognized quality higher education in this country.

In our reforms strategy, SLIATE has been recognized as a major player in the area of technical education; knowledge based development needs man advanced technical education sector. This initiative, which we have taken with the assistance of Austria and Netherlands, is for that important purpose.