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Sri Lanka as Asia’s education hub

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.

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