Sri Lankan higher education:

Shake up we had to have

Associate Professor Jay Weerawardena

Higher education sector in Sri Lanka is suggested to be in a crisis. This view comes mainly from some sectors of the student community - in particular from the politically affiliated student organizations.

Some months ago, higher education issues related news started occupying headlines of both Sinhala and English dailies with the student protest campaigns against the Government's decision to invite foreign universities to quench the growing thirst for university places and simultaneous government's action to bring back discipline to the university system by cracking-down the dominance of some of the politically motivated student unions. Irrespective of whether there is a crisis or not, the Higher Education Minister S B Dissanayake has made his intentions clear.

Manpower development

After several decades of discussions and inactivity, the Sri Lankan higher education sector requires a shake up and he is determined to proceed with it. The changes that have been envisaged imply a three-pronged strategy: (a) to make more university places available to those aspiring university education by getting the non-public sector participation, in particular, by inviting foreign universities, (b) make fundamental changes to the university curriculum making the graduates more employable and (c) build a world class university system by supporting a selected set of national universities facilitating them to achieve globally paralleled academic excellence.

The Minister has made it clear in many interviews with the media that it will take another seven or eight years to provide solutions to the problems in our university system. This view was echoed by his confidante Secretary to the Ministry Dr Sunil Navaratne in a recent media interview where he added; 'currently we are in the process of listening to various stakeholders'.

All these imply a healthy process. There is no doubt the Sri Lankan higher education system requires a shake up but at the same time it should be a carefully planned out one as the university system is part of the overall socio-economic system of the country. It is not only the pinnacle of the education system but also a major source of manpower development of the whole nation.

The purpose of this article is to address one aspect of the three-pronged strategy - i.e. how can we make our graduates employable? This has been emphasized as a priority national task by many writers as the periodical mass-absorptions of unemployed graduates to the State sector as a remedial measure has caused a substantial drain on the government coffers. It was only few weeks ago the Government in its most recent budget had to allocate substantial funds to clear another backlog of 10,000 graduates.

Reflections of a mismatch

Some years ago, in my capacity as HR Manager of a leading mercantile engineering establishment I had the opportunity to serve on interview panels for the recruitment of engineers. With its historical British upbringing as well as being a mercantile firm the company's work as well as recruitment interviews were conducted in English. In facing the interview panel the young graduates had difficulty in communicating in particular explaining the extra curricular work they had undertaken at the university. As a result their behaviour was defensive and their body language said that all.

The interview panel was looking for people with out-going personality and ability to work in a team environment. They always had the worry whether they will end up taking someone who will end up being a misfit to existing work teams at the shop floor level.

In all such instances we ended up selecting those who had done some sports or societal work at the university with some English speaking ability. Overall the communication difficulty was evident across all Arts or Non-Arts streams with those who attended reputed schools showing a substantial difference.

Unemployed undergraduates

This lack of confidence among graduates for mercantile sector jobs is demonstrated by the findings of a recent study undertaken by the Social Policy Analysis and Research Centre (SPARC), Colombo University. As per this study findings 70 percent of youth prefer jobs in the State Sector and only 18 percent prefer private sector jobs. Whilst 50 percent wants to migrate but only 17 percent of youth can speak English. This substantially alarming overall attitudinal problem among young job seekers is equally visible among unemployed undergraduates, who always hold the government in power responsible to provide employment for them. Considering the fact that only a vibrant and fast growing private sector can absorb youth job seeker whilst the job seekers themselves are not confident of joining the private sector the whole scenario displays a substantial mismatch. This mismatch needs to be corrected in any effort to produce employable graduates.

The roots of this mismatch have been well discussed by writers such as Professor Ashley Perera and C A Chandraprema. A quick revisit to these roots will help us identifying some steps to be taken to fix up the long- term graduate unemployment problem. Basically, consecutive governments after the independence have been heavily investing in the provision of liberal arts degrees primarily producing Government clerks and teachers.

The switchover of the medium of instruction to Sinhala whilst aggravating the problem created a substantial disadvantageous barrier between Sinhala only graduates and others who had completed their education in the Queen's language. Along with this politically motivated initiative came an economic development policy primarily based on State enterprises. The rapid expansion of the State sector which started with the nationalization of private ventures such as oil, transport and insurance had a debilitating effect on creating employment opportunities as it virtually marginalized the private sector role in any major economic value creating activity.

All the successive governments extensively embraced this policy and the Government ventured into all areas of manufacturing and service activities of the economy ranging from heavy industries such as steel and cement to catching and selling fish. All these institutions instead of contributing value to the economy became a substantial burden on the Government treasury. Over employment, corruption and political interference were rampant in them in addition being hot beds of trade union activities.

The total turnaround of economic policy to an open economy in 1977 and large-scale economic initiatives undertaken by the government such as FTZ and Mahaweli had a substantial positive impact on unemployment. The unemployment fell from 8.3 in 2003 to six percent in 2007 but to the policy planner's dismay graduate unemployment was not willing to budge!

To be continued