The unrest of the privileged!

University students are up in arms again and last week some student demonstrators threatened to walk from Peradeniya to Colombo to stage their protests. This time however it is nothing to do with the administration and the facilities in their universities but against the government policy to regularize private universities in Sri Lanka. They claim that with the proposed bill the government is planning to establish ‘Degree Shops’ in the country.

The first thought that struck me on this innuendo is that if recognizing and regularizing fee levying universities in a country is tantamount to establishing ‘Degree Shops’ then what are these topmost universities in the world like Harvard, Oxford and ANU (Australian National University)? Those are fee levying universities but they are ranked as the best universities in the world and produce thousands of graduates every year to fill up positions in global activity. Are they also just ‘Degree shops’?

Free education

When you think a little further on the same line you realize that almost all the universities in the world, except those in a few socialist countries and Sri Lanka, are fee levying and in that sense are we to call all those universities of the world ‘Degree Shops’? Thus, having been the exception rather than the rule in international university education all these years, are we having a hard time coming to term with global realities in education?

What is even more intriguing is to note that this unrest against the regularizing of fee levying universities should generate from among the students who already enjoy the privilege of free education. Because, when you analyze the university admission examination results as against those who finally earn the privilege of entering the universities you could observe that the system leaves out more candidates than it takes in and thus this issue of private universities should be the concern of the majority that is left out of the non fee levying system and certainly not the concern of those privileged who are already in the system.

Every year about 250,000 students sit for the university entrance exam in Sri Lanka and due to the extremely competitive nature of this university entrance (as the positions available in the non fee levying universities are limited), the students and their parents undergo immense hardships in terms of finance and time to prepare themselves for this hurdle. From these 250,000 candidates, every year about 100,000 earn the grade of eligibility to enter the local universities.

Foreign exchange

It is now the culling will start, and of this 100,000 eligibles only about 25,000 get selected to the universities every year leaving the balance 75,000 in the lurch. Thus we have been throwing 75,000 prospective undergrads out on the road every year for want of facilities in the traditional non fee levying system. The tragedy here is that since Sri Lanka did not have fee levying universities all this while, these students who are not good enough to be accommodated in the non fee levying system have no option but to give up hopes of earning a university degree.

Therefore, should there be a demonstration to highlight the unaccommodating nature of the current system, such a demonstration should rightly generate from among the majority of candidates who are distressed, demanding that they be granted the right to at least obtain a degree at a fee if they are not good enough to do so at the tax payers' expense.

However no such demonstrations have taken place so far purely because these students are not organized and also because they have this uncertainty about their future to be concerned with. But now the incongruity is, when the government is taking action to correct a situation that spawned unrest among these candidates for years by offering them the option of obtaining graduation at a fee, those who are privileged to be in the non fee levying system are protesting against that move.

Primary and secondary education

The difference here is that those who are in the universities, unlike those who fail to secure admission, are organized and they are more secure about their future. Could you describe this move in any other way other than sheer selfishness to monopolize local university education? Thus these are demonstrations by the privileged to protect their interest at the cost of the majority that have been suffering in silence!

What happens after all this is still more interesting. Of these 75,000 rejected students about 10,000 go to foreign universities to earn their degrees at an exorbitant cost to their parents and to the country. According to Keeerthi Jayasuriya, the Director of International Scholar, a prominent institution that arranges foreign universities for locals, “These universities cost the country billions in terms of foreign exchange and only about 10 percent of these students come back, meaning that we have gifted our young talent to foreign lands after giving primary and secondary education and having also paid for their tertiary education with hard currency”. He further maintains that, “This is nothing new because the foreign universities are already here awarding degrees, but what we need is standards in keeping with the country’s needs”. Right to be educated, paid or unpaid, is a basic human right and nobody, not even the exceptionally bright in society, should be allowed to stand in the way of that right. [email protected]