Quality of undergraduate - quality has declined

Professor Wiswa Warnapala, the Minister of Higher Education, in his collection of articles woven around University education, learning and discipline, is of the opinion that the quality of undergraduate education in the Sri Lankan Universities has declined in the last few decades in spite of an enormous amount of money being spent on the maintenance and teaching in the whole university system.

Prof. Warnapala compiling his oral and written presentations at the exclusively higher forums of learning and teaching has emerged with a comprehensive study of the system of higher education and its social and political relevance apart from its inherent academic importance. The content as well as the tone of his writing is impregnated with the erudity of a learned writer and the propensity of a seasoned politician. The author delves deeply into the subject that is his speciality which is today an area that forms a forum for discussion both at political and academic level.

So the author leaves no area in this field untouched without focusing his scholarly research and social attention on the issues which he is bound to touch upon as his office as well as his discipline demands a study at the highest possible level.

His main emphasis is on the aspect of technical education in the stream of higher education which he says needs a new approach to suit the demands of changing technology. One area which he considered as necessary to qualify itself for a new approach is that it should develop in partnership with industry. The work had gone a long way in this regard to diversity their tertiary education in response to the increasing social demand. Towards this end, it needs progress and approach to a research culture which should form the basis of University education system.

This requires expansion of technical education in the country. The writer identifies Sri Lanka as one of the comparatively stable and developed human resources basis that comes into existence on the basis of the social demand model of education. However, in the absence of a learning culture being developed within the University system, the quality of undergraduate education had visibly declined. Even if there is an expansion of Universities for over a period of five decades, there is no corresponding change in the field of technical education.

Therefore, he suggests that new opportunities for growth and development of education need to be based on the principles of public service, and reforms should be in conformity with that development.

In a speech of the Importance of Technical Education, he stresses the point that making adjustments in the educational system should suit the specific economic and social needs within which context both technical and vocational education need be expanded. In his convocation address at the Sabaragamuwa University, he emphasized the point that an intellectual culture needed to be restored in the Universities.

The challenge before us is to convert those higher seats of learning to find ways and means of enhancing the quality and relevance of University education.

In contrast, the early advocates of the University of Ceylon in the 1940s spoke of the need to restore indigenous culture in order for one to become a complete person, as he needs to grow up in a culture.

In the past, when formulating an educational policy, emphasis was laid on the production of personnel for clerical, educational and professional positions which guaranteed the smooth functioning of the colonial or semi-colonial rule in the island. This trend has now shifted for a vocational training with a view to produce higher level technicians who require a specific training leading to the production of a highly skilled worker. That requires for the vocational training institutions to establish a close relationship with the corporate world which in turn demands a diversification of tertiary institutions to meet the growing social demand for higher education.

‘Rethinking necessary on external degree programs of the University in Sri Lanka - traces the history of higher education in Sri Lanka since the establishment of the University College in 1921, the students of which commenced their academic journey as external students of the University of London. The Ceylon University Ordinance No, 20 of 1942 established the University of Ceylon in 1942 with authority to grant degrees on its own while an amendment to it introduced in 1961, enabled the University of Ceylon to grant external degrees as well.

The author does not forget to touch on the biggest social problem the Universities have to handle today, ragging and unrest, in the Universities. The murder of two students at the University of Jayewardenepura and the several members of the academic staff including the Dean of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Peradeniya being given stale mud bath were two incidents which attracted the attention of the writer who laments that inadequacy displayed by the student movement in the Universities is due to lack of an intellectual debate on major political and economic issues.

He says - ‘In our Universities, the frustration of the student community consisting largely of rural youth tends to get articulated in these issues. The tragedy is that despite the limited capacity to attain higher intellectual attainments, they claim for political importance the grounds that they represent that nation’s intelligentsia.

Anyone interested in measuring the degree of unrest in the social and intellectual conduct among the University students today, this collection of speeches by the Minister of Higher Education, the most suitable and best equipped to speak on the subject is worth reading. It carries 22 clever presentations by the Minister.

- E.M.G. Edirisinghe