Suggestions for development of higher education in SL - Part I
Dr Tilokasundari KARIYAWASAM
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.
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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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