Sri Lanka as Asia’s education hub
Dr Terrence de Silva- Former Deputy Director
General of Medical Services Health Ministry
The government of Sri Lanka has now embarked on an ambitious mission
to make this island the education hub in Asia. Whilst improving the
existing facilities in the public universities, the government’s aim is
to encourage more investment on private tertiary educational
institutions by reputed international universities and the local
investors.
In the short run it will stop the exodus of precious foreign exchange
from this country, which is at present spent for education of Sri Lankan
children in foreign countries and in the medium and long run it will
attract more people in the Asian region and rest of the world for higher
education in Sri Lanka, which would bring foreign exchange to this
country and also create new job opportunities to Sri Lankans. Expansion
of the system with its attendant increase and diversity of disciplines
will strictly accrue more and better benefits of education to the
prospective learner in particular and the community in general.
Malabe Private Medical College |
As a preliminary step towards this endeavour Higher Education
Ministry decided to grant degree awarding status to several private
educational institutions under the supervision and guidance of the
University Grant Commission (UGC). For example, Sri Lanka Institute of
Information Technology, Australian College of Business and Technology
and the Acquinas College of Higher Studies have been given this
privilege. This idea was welcomed by many parents of this country whose
children are deprived of higher education due to non-availability of
sufficient placements in the state universities, in spite of fulfilling
all the admission requirements for various courses. Further the parents
whose children are studying in International Schools too welcomed this
idea.
Healthcare
Although the process of recognizing degree awarding institutions was
in place for some time the recognition of private institutes in respect
of medicine appears to go at a slower pace. As a result the parents
continued to send their children to countries where the standard of
healthcare is not in keeping with that of Sri Lanka, to educate their
children in the field of medicine. It is a well-established fact that
not only the healthcare even the indicators related to primary and
secondary education of Sri Lanka are much better than those of the other
comparable countries. See Table 1 for adult literacy rates of SAARC
countries.
Private medical school
For many years people of this country had a dream of a private
medical school. This became a reality in 1982/83. The students of this
medical school situated at Ragama, were allowed to do their clinical
attachments at the North Colombo General Hospital, Ragama. It was
subsequently developed into a Teaching Hospital. As the Director of this
newly upgraded Teaching Hospital at the inception the author witnessed
the massive development that took place in this hospital within a short
period of time of establishing the private medical school. Not only the
hospital, but also the whole Ragama town became modernized with the
upgrading of the hospital.
Today this hospital has become one of the leading hospitals in Sri
Lanka. However, it was very unfortunate that a dispute arose at the time
of conducting the final examination of the Ragama Medical School, as
some authorities of this institute insisted of affiliating it to the
Colombo Medical Faculty in order to obtain the same certificate like
that of the Colombo students, which ultimately ended up in acquisition
of this medical school by the government.
Though there were many obstacles for the provision of tertiary
education in the private sector, its participation in other economic
activities continued and in fact expanded in the past few years
including in the fields of primary and secondary education. At present
even in some remote areas there are private international schools
providing a good service at a reasonable price. However, it was very
recently that private sector once again looked at the opportunities in
the tertiary education sector and only one private medical school has
been so far commenced operations during this period. This private
medical school is situated at Malabe in very pleasant surroundings.
Whilst the degree awarding status for this institution is being worked
out by the Higher Education Ministry, there appears to be certain
obstacles for its functioning. In spite of the fact that the majority of
the public including those in the medical profession welcome the idea of
establishing private medical schools in Sri Lanka, few with certain
ulterior motives work against this move.
Though the concept of private medical schools is new to Sri Lanka, it
is not so to other countries. For instance the first private medical
college in India was commenced in 1953 (Kasturba Medical College,
Manipal). Since then a large number of private medical schools have been
started in that country. For example there are 34 medical schools in
Andra Pradesh of which only 13 managed by the State and the balance 21
are private medical schools. Except for the Maldives, Sri Lanka is the
only SAARC country without a private medical school. Of course it is not
possible to ascertain the current status of Afghanistan.
Obstacles to the vision - education hub in Asia
Any country to develop must have a clear vision and all institutions
and individuals must work towards that vision. It has been observed that
countries developed during certain periods under prominent leaders have
been able to do so due to two main reasons. Firstly the political
leadership had a clear vision. Secondly the leadership ensured that the
vision would not get diluted for any reasons, at the stage of
implementation through the respective organizations. Any vision would
become a failure if the government machinery is not geared to work
towards it. Therefore if the government is very much interested in
making Sri Lanka the education hub in Asia, all relevant organizations
should be made aware about it, if not the respective organizations would
continue to work towards their institutional vision, goals and plans
which are already in place, disregarding the vision of the political
leadership.
Training foreign graduates
Training of the foreign graduates does not end with the completion of
their final examinations. Foreign graduates returning to Sri Lanka who
have studied in any language, other than English, are given three months
‘Familiarization course’ under several qualified specialists in
government hospitals in rotation and also paid a small stipend during
this period. Irrespective of the language, all foreign graduates are
given clinical attachments to study under specialist consultants in
non-teaching hospitals for them to get prepared for the ERPM
examination. This is a process recommended by the SLMC to Health
Ministry. Isn’t this a form of training? The blessings of both the GMOA
and the Association of Medical Specialists (AMS) were forthcoming for
this training carried out in government hospitals. |