Developing tertiary education:

END THIS ‘QUIET CRISIS’

Lionel Wijesiri

As citizens of Sri Lanka, we should be happy that our education system is accessible for all irrespective of any social, racial or religious background. However, while it is true that accessibility to education has created a level playing field in the primary and secondary education fields, the same cannot be said about the tertiary education sector.

It was revealed recently at the EDEX Education expo that only five percent of student population is engaged in tertiary education. What is more disturbing point is the disclosure that Sri Lanka is currently the lowest in the South Asian region on students’ engagement in tertiary education.

The concept of Tertiary Education in Sri Lanka began in the early 1990s. At that time, the share of the workforce with educational qualifications at the GCE A’L and above was about 7.5 percent. Today it has increased to about 18 percent, indicating that there has been a substantial increase in the employment opportunities for entrants with higher educational qualifications. It is therefore quite obvious that the policy challenge for Sri Lanka is to expand tertiary education, while at the same time making it more inclusive. This is not likely to happen by itself; it will require targeted and focused polices to help our youth qualify for, enroll in, and complete tertiary education.

Crisis

There is a quiet crisis in tertiary education in Sri Lanka that is longstanding but becoming more serious given the present economic growth. Opportunities for tertiary education are seriously insufficient for the needs of an economy expected to grow annually at 7- 8 percent. The proportion of the student group which enters tertiary education is less than half the average for Asia. Although there are 15 state universities in Sri Lanka but it is estimated that 10 more are needed now to meet the demand for higher education and the economy’s needs.

The government has recognized the problems and accordingly, prepared its policy objective with regard to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) as set out in ‘Mahinda Chinthana - 10 year development horizon’. The policy promises to improve quality and relevance of tertiary training so that it provides nationally recognized and internationally accepted qualifications in keeping with advanced technology that ultimately fulfills skills needs of the world of work.

The government’s current strategy towards development of tertiary training outlines three broad policy objectives

* Improving quality and relevance of programmes
* Increasing enrolments in institutions
* Improving operational and managerial efficiency of training institutions

Although it does not indicate the expected increase of the percentage of each cohort going to higher education from the present to the end of the plan, there have been incremental improvements over time. Yet, the tertiary education system is still not at the level, either in volume or quality, required to produce the number of educated people the country needs to address the serious development issues or provide the skills needed for a rapidly modernizing and expanding economy.

Constraints

One complicating factor in accelerating the improvements needed is the longstanding tension between Higher Education ministry and a group of interested parties over the degree to which higher education should serve as a public or private good. This is not a story peculiar to Sri Lanka but it is a seriously limiting factor on the reforms needed to improve tertiary education. The socialist ideological background in some segments in our our society has been a strong driver for education to remain a publicly organized and funded activity for the whole country. Private, profit-generating education has been regarded as elitist, exclusionary and antithetical to the good of the country’s progress overall.

Employment-oriented vocational training courses

This tension still exists even though the government recognizes the reality that Sri Lanka’s tertiary education system is not going to expand or improve in quality as quickly as required if the regulatory and operating environment is not made friendlier towards private provision.

Change management

Another difficulty is the dysfunction in the publicly funded education system. There are still not enough primary and secondary schools with necessary facilities to enable true universal access. Teacher quality is generally uneven, teacher absenteeism is a serious problem and teaching is old fashioned. Public education is almost free in Sri Lanka but because of the problems with the system, families who can afford it send their children to private schools. Competition to get into these schools is intense because demand is so high which contributes to high fees and charges during the secondary years.

Sri Lanka’s present growth is mainly led by service sector, which has had a boost due to the ICT revolution. However, this is a skill-intensive sector and Sri Lanka is now moving up the value chain, which calls for greater R and D efforts and requires knowledge workers as opposed to manual workers. A new strategy for meeting this challenge needs to be evolved with complete policy commitment on the part of the government. This new window of service sector led growth in Sri Lanka is not an opportunity that can be frittered away. Similar to export of manufacturing, which requires an infrastructure of roads, electricity and dedicated labour, service sector export requires a steady supply of highly skilled manpower which can only be supported by a robust tertiary education system along with an internet infrastructure that is both deep as well as broad.

Private sector

Seen from this perspective, the business of providing appropriate tertiary education opportunities is not just the concern of the Ministry of Education, but all other ministries with operations in related areas such as, Commerce and Trade, IT, Communications, Health, Science and Technology, Finance etc. It is clear that without this kind of holistic approach to tertiary education provisioning it will be impossible to fulfill our aspirations to be in par with the Asian economy in knowledge services.

However, straddling across the functional areas of different ministries is difficult if not nearly impossible to administer without some kind to creative out-of-the-box thinking. Sri Lanka is well known for its large pool of technical manpower, a fair proportion of which finds employment in developed countries, especially in the West. As a happy sequel to the story, Sri Lanka has recently witnessed a big boom in the construction, tourist and IT sector. In order to sustain this trend, and to ensure that Sri Lanka does not throw away this key advantage, it is imperative that we continue to produce a critical mass of highly skilled manpower at an accelerated pace. An enabling academic and economic setting is a key factor determining the fate of our nation in the wake of the knowledge sector boom.

Tertiary education institutions are required, like business firms, to monitor and adapt to the continuous changes taking place in the political, economic, social and technological environment.

Technology and globalisation of information and knowledge, taking place as a result of electronic revolution, shake the very foundations of how we are currently handling our tertiary education system. But, what is the reality in Sri Lanka? Does the tertiary education system of Sri Lanka ensure employability of its output? What are the contemporary issues and challenges of tertiary education? How these issues can be overcome? We must attempt to bring out these issues and find possible remedies to provide a better future for those youths who are going to be the sufferers, survivors or winners of the job-seeking game

The trend in Sri Lanka is clear. We need to improve our Tertiary Education System but public funds are in short supply. This is a gigantic task which requires huge resources. It would, therefore, not be possible for government to go for a substantial increase in budgetary funds for tertiary education. Private Sector funding is available and FDI in education is also possible.

We need to consider these options very seriously and study international experiences and models to draw learning for our case. In addition we need to develop a system of student loan financing as well as fiscal tax exemption/credits in case of loans. In Singapore and China where private institution have been allowed, the higher education sector is flourishing.