Redesigning university education: A necessity

Lionel Wijesiri

Higher education is widely accepted as a major instrument for promoting socio-economic, political and cultural development in any country. Universities educate future leaders and develop the high-level technical capacities that underpin economic growth and development. Besides, the main purpose and relevance of university education is the provision of suitable manpower to accelerate the socio-economic development of a nation. In such perspective, higher education is regarded as an instrument of social change and economic development.

For a long period of time, the universities in Sri Lanka have been central to the success of the national higher education enterprise, pursuing distinctive missions while responding to changing societal expectations to expand and diversify their functions.

In recent years, however, a number of decision-makers and opinion-shapers have begun to question about many aspects of our universities and demanding greater attention to undergraduate education, and wider scrutiny of faculty productivity. Within this political and economic climate, it is essential to consider how the challenges facing our universities today may fundamentally affect the lives of faculty within them including both students and academic staff.

I am not a specialist in higher education. My little speciality lies elsewhere ? in Human Resources. I share my concerns as a senior citizen who is interested in the welfare of the country and the future generation and accordingly use this article as an opportunity to reflect on possible futures. These few reflections are offered as my personal opinion how our universities may be sustained as economically, organizationally, and intellectually viable and attractive places for academic work.

Crisis

The story of the present university education in Sri Lanka can be viewed as a story of mixed fortune. Today, there are doubts whether our universities under the current conditions will be able to continue to lay claims on being central to national capacity to connect with the new international knowledge system and develop technologies needed in the wider society.

Most educationalists believe that university governance in Sri Lanka today is nothing but crises management.

I believe there are 5 reasons for the crisis.

1. Funding Shortage: It is not a secret that there is growing shortage of funds and learning resources in our university system. It is true that there is a substantial increase in the proportion of total expenditure devoted to overall education, but allocation made to university sector has been considered to be inadequate considering the increase in under-graduate enrolment and ever increasing cost.

2. Deteriorated infrastructure: It is worrisome to note that our universities are fast decaying. All the resources required for education production process are in short supply. Lecture halls, laboratories, student’s hostels, library space, books and journals and office spaces are all inadequate. This condition of resource inadequacy is an offshoot of the endemic financial crises in the sector.

3. Brain-drain syndrome: University brain-drain refers to widespread migration of academic staff from the universities in the country to overseas universities or equivalent institutions here their services are better rewarded. According to information available, institutional deterioration has prompted substantial ‘brain-drain’ of academic staff and impeded new staff recruitment. It must be emphasized that while the best brains are leaving the university system, the broad aim of producing high level manpower from the system for national development cannot be achieved.

4. Graduate unemployment: The problem of graduate unemployment is a reality in Sri Lanka where some graduates had to wait for years to get a job in the public service. It is even common in recent times for university graduates to be subjected to series of competitive examination for appointments.

5. Volatile and militant student unionism: One of the banes of effective university management in Sri Lanka in recent times is the unbridled student violent reaction to political issues and internal problems.

The result of student militancy and violent unionism has been the constant closure of universities. It has been observed that universities these days are not totally free from the hand of politics outside the university system.

Fortunately, the Government has understood the prevailing ills and are determined to put the House in order. At the highest level, President Mahinda Rajapaksa recently promised to talk with student population and the academic staff of the universities to identify the problems encountered by them. These are good signs.

To be continued