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Suggestions for development of higher education in SL - Part I

In Sri Lanka there is the need for a radical reform of Higher Education in the context of its socio-economic-educational developments.

The most powerful factor in Sri Lanka has been extraordinary expansion of secondary education in recent decades. The development constitutes the major factor behind the strongly felt need for qualitative and structural transformation of Higher Education.

Another factor is that Higher Education caters only to an insignificant minority of 1.8 percent. This has to be changed under the pressure of numbers and of a series of socio-economic factors. In an era of extremely conspicuous competitiveness and explosive aspirations, a stronger movement towards greater social equality has emerged. To those who qualify to enter, but fail due to lack of places they perceive it as injustice.

Free education

For those who do not enter the Universities, things are more problematic. Provision for education after GCE/OL and GCE/AL is highly unsatisfactory. An uncertain future exists for about 98 percent, who have left full-time formal education. It is unacceptable that so many young people are left so unpromising a way. As attainment does not open up opportunities, aspirations suffer, leading to lawlessness, riots and terrorism. There is an increasing recognition that Higher Education should not be the privilege of a specific age group. (18-35 years), but that it should be available to all those who are capable of benefiting from it.

Higher Education should be job-oriented

Year 2011 will be precisely one generation space from the beginning of the great educational expansion wave which took place with the introduction of free education in 1944. Of the various factors correlated with the admission to Universities, by far the most significant is the educational levels of parents. An increase in the number of mothers and fathers with even a secondary education inevitably implies more children demanding Higher Education. The fruits of 60 years of free education, are now being felt among today’s parents, who have continued in schools, who want more of their own children educated. We can confidently expect their numbers to grow and their demands for Higher Education to increase. ‘Explosion of Aspirations’ among parents and youths is a common phenomenon today.

Economic progress

Another factor is the existing inequalities of educational opportunity. In Sri Lanka, the major administrative divisions are not similarly endowed. NEC has highlighted this very effectively. The educational policies are based on opening the gates of Universities to those few qualified by traditional criteria. All these and similar sources of inequality have necessarily added to the pressure of social demand for Higher Education.

In Sri Lanka, 22 percent of the population is below the lowest poverty line and this poverty of the people has to be eliminated. It is necessary to ensure a remarkable quality of life for all through modernisation of agriculture and development of industries. Modern science and technology has to be adapted, without disturbing the traditional, spiritual values of the people. Science and technology is the most powerful instrument of social transformation and economic progress.

Meanwhile scientific knowledge has been expanding apace and there have been rapid developments in the technologies for putting it into practical use. Most far reaching has been the advance in the use of information technology and with it to rapid evolution of computers and computer software and also a transformation in telecommunications. For Sri Lanka knowledge and skills will be of prime importance. Universities have a mission to pursue and transfer new knowledge, to help to manage and apply international knowledge explosion set off by educational technology and educate and train to the highest level people who will provide the brain and backbone of industry and commerce professions and service organizations.

Skilled personnel

The economic task of the future according to Drucker is to raise the productivity of knowledge. It takes the view that the basic economic resource already is and will in future be knowledge (not capital, natural resources or labour). According to this analysis, the leading social groups of the knowledge society will be knowledge workers. Knowledge workers will consist of knowledge executive, people who know how to put knowledge to productive use. The central ingredient in economic success has become knowledge.

As a result of technological progress, the structure of the labour market changes rapidly and its flexibility is one of the main conditions of economic growth. If the supply of qualified manpower is not sufficiently elastic to meet this situation, there will be graduate unemployment and a shortage of skilled personnel. The educated will be unemployable. This is a glaring deficiency reflected in the Sri Lanka system.

Mass education of the formal level of education must offer a wide range of fields of study at Higher Education Level. Higher Education cannot offer a rigid classification of disciplines. Equality of fields of study should be maintained. As reflected in the existing Universities it cannot be from general to specialized, from theoretical to practical, from education to job. It is necessary to provide alternatives.

The criticism of the outdated ideologies of Higher Education leads us to believe that no more progress is to be expected from partial reforms. It is only from a comprehensive overall concept of the Higher Education system that it can be achieved.

These factors have created a set of new problems, which Higher Education has to encounter.

* Higher Education has to fulfill a much larger and varied number of functions, than those assigned up to now.

* Higher Education has to cater to a very large number of students and bring about a change in the clientele.

* It has to cater to an increased variety of greater heterogeneity of aptitudes, abilities, motivations, aspirations and expectations of students.

* It has to play a vital role as a key factor of production on economic development.

* It has to introduce an extending diversity of offerings and qualifications with more flexibility of transfer between courses.

* It has to meet the needs and conditions of Higher Education in the rapidly changing technologies of society.

* Higher Education should be available to all those capable of profiting from it. This leads to the concept of adult education, retraining, recurrent education as components of Higher Education.

* As a development in Higher Education Technical and Vocational educators should be expanding to cater for a much larger number of students and it should be a component of Higher Education.

* It should develop closer links with Universities.

Technical institutes

Such a system becomes a comprehensive University and will save waste of talent and spirit. What may be needed is more anxiety to get right inside the human condition more sensitivity, a great capacity be imaginatively and morally aware. This will involve discrimination and critical judgment, rationality and discipline of mind, a refusal to give way to sentimentally and illusion. There can be no blue print to the future of so complex an enterprise as Higher Education.

Today Universities, affiliated Universities and Polytechnics constitute Higher Education. Only 1.8 percent of students enter the Universities. As affiliated Universities and Polytechnics and technical institutes do not offer degree courses, society does not perceive these as institutions of Higher Education. Therefore Higher Education should be expanded so as to enable admission of 10 percent students in 10 years time. There need to be increasing diversely within the range of different types of institutions.

The most important reform will be to upgrade technical and vocational education as a component of Higher Education, so as to cater to the 98.2 percent that drop out after, secondary education.

It will have its own vision and distinction portfolio of provision developed to respond to the needs of clearly identified client groups, the new trends foresee admission from all branches of secondary education and even without complete secondary education. This implies a whole range of new tasks, adult and continuing education in its various forms. As a development in Higher Education, Technical and Vocational education should be possible. If it remains an unsolved problem, the gap created will leave many questions unanswered.

 

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