Importance of quality assurance in universities - Part II:

Tertiary institutions should be centres of knowledge and professional training

The text of a speech delivered by Higher Education Minister Prof. Wiswa Warnapala at the launching of the ‘Quality Assurance Toolkit’prepared jointly by the UNESCO and the Commonwealth Learning at the Sri Lanka Foundation on June 22, 2009.

Part I was published yesterday (Link).

Heavy weightage in favour of Social Sciences, Humanities, Commerce and Management must undergo a change, and one way of overcoming this is to develop more and more professional programs. Any attempt to promote this concept, as we experienced in the case of the Allied Health Sciences, is certain to meet with stiff resistance from organizations like the GMOA which does not seem to accept the need for diversification in the higher education sector.

The traditional academic criteria should not determine the nature and content of the new courses; in my view, the duration of a professional program of study, something similar to what we tried to promote through the Allied Health Sciences Programme, needs to be tied to the requirements of the work place.

Different skills

A variety of short programs running to 1-2 years and 3 to 4 years, can rightly respond to rapidly changing needs for different types of skills. The country, at this stage of her development based on stability, unity and harmony, needs more and more skills-oriented programs of study, and the Universities, as they are still embedded in the traditions which they inherited from British times, do not indulge in innovative thinking relating to specialization and more flexibility in the courses of study.

The failure to modernize the curricula results in intellectual retardation, a feature which is endemic in the system. The lack of a robust intellectual culture, which must include both creativity and standard research, has led to the deterioration of learning among the undergraduates who, on certain occasions, indulge in violence without an objective. Kelaniya University incident last week was one such example, and it, more than anything, showed the lack of a commitment on the part of the undergraduate community to establish a vibrant intellectual culture in their own Universities.

Student activists, who provide leadership to student struggles of the undergraduates, are drop-outs-who continuously failed the examinations in order to remain within the University, and they are there to promote political interests of a group of students working according to a narrow political agenda. It is this trend which needs to be immediately arrested in order to restore the learning environment of the Universities.

In such an environment, the academic community, as the intellectual peers in the place, has a major responsibility to be discharged as Sir Eric Ashby, in his Masters and Scholars highlighted. Sir Eric Ashby, writing immediately after the 1968 student unrest at the London School of Economics (LSE), stated that “administration, faculty and students: these are the components of the modern University. In theory all three components work towards the same end. We talk of the University as a community dedicated to the preservation, advancement and transmission of knowledge”.

The country needs disciplined men and women as intellectuals - or as members of the educated work force - but the product whom we produce through a totally State-funded University system, is not a person with all qualities of good citizenship. It needs to be emphasized that education and lifelong learning are about improving knowledge and skills; they are at the heart of personal and social development. One aspect of personality development is the building of relations between peoples, groups and communities, and therefore, education, at whatever level it is given, fosters a deeper and more harmonious form of human development.

What I am trying to stress is the pivotal role of secondary education in the learning process of young people and in social development. Tertiary institutions should be centres of knowledge and professional training. In the Sri Lankan context, what requires is a fresh approach to the learning process, based on a flexible system of education in which educational opportunities could be enhanced. This cannot be achieved without a comprehensive change in the learning environment of the secondary schools, whose products come via a tution industry which has created a tution culture in the country.

Tution industry in Sri Lanka is a big business and its annual turnover runs to millions, and the type of learning culture, which it fosters among the children of secondary schools, is not at all in the interest of the intellectual development of the University undergraduates. The criticism is that the system does not create opportunities for the development of the personality with a broad vision.

Basic knowledge

A good basic education should be combined with out of school approaches that help people to experience the three dimensions of education - ethical and cultural, scientific and technological and economic and social - to learn about themselves, develop interpersonal skills and acquire basic knowledge. In order to highlight the importance of the school - here in this context I refer to the public school - in the development of the personality and intellectual attainments, I would like to quote Sir Ralph Furse, who was the Recruiting Officer for the British Civil Service in Africa in Colonies of the period. “As to the public schools, wrote Sir Ralph Furse, “ they are vital: We could not have run the show without them. In England, Universities train the mind; the public schools train character and teach leadership’. I do not think for a moment that we should emulate the system which was totally class and elite oriented but the point which I am emphasizing is the need to train the character and leadership of the student through the secondary school, from which the undergraduate enters the University.

Sir Ivor Jennings, writing in 1948, stated that an undergraduate should have “tact, judgment, imagination, knowledge of human beings, organizing abilities and in short a combination of character and wisdom. These qualities cannot be acquired from books or taught in lectures. They can be acquired only by experience in a suitable environment “. The environment is primarily a good school, and this is why I stressed on the need to change the nature and content of the learning environment in the schools.

The tuition culture has taken over the learning culture in the school, and the only interest of the child is to pass the examination by hook or by crook. Intellectual tastes and interests are limited and the tution culture has successfully stifled the desire for the cultivation of intellectual pursuits. Therefore it is the University that can lay the foundations of experience which the graduate builds upon in the early years of his career.

Distance Education

Distance Education and Open Learning programs, as I said earlier, can be effective in increasing access. It can provide opportunities for both the under-privileged and women. Distance Education can be an effective way to provide life long education. This mode could be put into good use in the North where so many young men and women are displaced. Since the Distance Education programs are less expensive, they could be established in the North with the available technology.

Before I deal with the issue of Quality Assurance, I need to refer to the external examinations of the Universities. All Universities conduct external examinations and they registrar candidates in large numbers in order to generate funds. Certain Universities register nearly 100,000 students, who are exploited by the tuition industry in the country. In my view, there is a tuition mafia whose behaviour is parasitic; they train the students to cramm a set of well-structured notes. I advocate a limit to this kind of mass registration of external candidates as this has become a form of producing graduates who are incompetent and non-intellectual; they are a set of half-baked men who do not fit into any worthwhile occupation.

External graduates

This deterioration in the standards is due to the fact that the Universities have failed to produce a quality external graduate and majority of these graduates are General Degree holders with very loose combination of subjects, and they cannot market themselves with such a degree. I am told that the Universities conduct seminars for the external graduates and it is through such seminars that hints are given to the candidates who invariably make use of them to get a pass. The quality of the external candidate has deteriorated largely because of the nature of the admission policy and the criteria of admission; we propose to change the method by which external candidates are admitted to the courses by making the Z score as the basis of admission.

I notice some academics, who are Tuition Wallahas - who thrive and fatten themselves on this scheme, are opposed to such changes on the basis of the argument that it would restrict the intake. Of course, the intake - this kind of mass registration, has to be restricted in the name intellectualism and scholarship. This, in addition to the deterioration which we witness in the learning culture of the Universities, is yet another aspect of the deteriorating features within the intellectual community.