Higher education is the cornerstone of development of a nation. It provides the knowledge needed to generate new concepts, ideas, technology, innovations, skills and also, how to think logically to arrive at fruitful unbiased conclusions based on facts and figures. The learning process begins from the time of birth, the first teacher being the mother of the child.
The child, after going through the mill of school education, is developed to the level where he is ready to step into the free world with the idea of exploring and determine whether he would be someone useful to himself as well as to the society. In order to achieve such a target, he realizes that it’s pertinent to be a member of higher learning centre, where, a youth is molded to be one according to his expectation. Such learning is provided only by the universities and higher learning institutes of the world, where there is a concentration of knowledge of any academic discipline in the form of highly intelligent and educated man power and physical wealth.
Mostly crammers and not the intelligent get in
There are about 15 universities in our own country and these cater to a student population of about 22000 annually, which is about 07.33 % of the total number who wants to read for a degree. It’s about 16 % of the students who pass the magic score to qualify to enter a university. The entry qualification is also debatable because, most students who don’t do well in school education excel very well in the university education. For example, students who had failed to gain admission to any of the local universities had shown brilliant results in foreign universities, especially in the US.
Some students who had passed just one subject at the GCE A/L examination had done so well in universities in the US and got into the Dean’s merit lists. Recently a student from Royal College, having scored two As and a B pass failed to gained a place in our engineering faculties and therefore, entered the State University of Minnesota. There he completed the degree so well and the professors of that university told me that they didn’t meet such a bright student for the last 10 years.
This young man after graduation was offered many engineering positions in local townships but opted to further his education and is now engaged in research leading to a PhD degree in engineering in a leading university in the US. Another Bio Science student from Ananda College, who did not gain admission to a local university with two As and one B pass graduated with a GPA of 4.0 from the same university in the US and later obtained a PhD degree on molecular biology and now working as a research scientist in one of the leading universities in the US. He had already published about half a dozen high quality research papers in international peer referred indexed journals.
What a crime to waste young talent
The above examples illustrate that the selection criteria to universities is not quite correct and during the process many talented students are left out from the universities and only crammers, irrespective of brilliance are admitted to our universities. Most of the students who deserve to be university students are left out of our universities simply because ours is a free education system and therefore, only a limited number of students could be granted university education. Our selection criteria is based on the Z score, which is calculated to the sixth decimal and the future of the student is decided by the sixth decimal of Z score. A student who wants to be a doctor, engineer or a scientist is decided by the fifth or sixth decimal of a numerical system.
What a crime to waste the young mind that would live in frustration for the rest of the life. About 30 to 40 years ago, when there were four subjects for the HSC/GCE AL examination, a student with four simple passes was admitted to the medical college; in some instances, a student with three simple passes and 25 % of the fourth subject, then it was Botany, was also admitted to medical schools and they have been top doctors and some are even working even today. From the experience of the universities, it’s clear that what’s shown at school education and what’s achieved at the selection examination do not positively correlate on the achievements of university education. A bad egg at school could shine very well in university education. A student who scored three S passes could be trained to be an excellent doctor; it all depends on how the student is trained at the university.
Free and Open System
The above account would clearly indicate that a stringent selection criterion precludes students from achieving what the students want. This is very well proved in the US university system, where anyone with an average high school education track record an gain admissions to universities and do well. For that matter anyone can achieve his target freely without being dictated by a third party. Unfortunately, here an outsider decides what the person should learn and what he should be doing; it’s a pathetic primitive system. In the US the education is so free and diversified that a person having done a major undergraduate degree in math and a graduate degree either in math or statistics finally can enter a medical school to do a MD together with a PhD degree. I met a fair number of such Sri Lankan students in the US.
There the student decides what he wants to study at the university and no one dictated terms to him-it’s a free country. There, a person can change the path of the education at any stage of the education. In Sri Lanka selection criteria is so harsh because the country is very poor at the same time glued to the old fashion, free education system which the Government do not want to change because of the fear of student riots.
The Government has failed to realize that students are just school leavers, and learners. They do not have the qualifications or the experience to dictate terms to the policy makers and the Government how to run universities. They of course can point out shortcomings in their study programs. The Government must have the vision to take correct, unbiased actions leaving behind personal survival agenda and should listen to students on academic policy matters.
Youth in our country suffer mentally simply because they can’t pursue higher education in their own direction. It’s also a huge mental pressure for the parents who want to educate their children according to the wish of the child. A fair number of parents now can afford to educate their children in private universities. Most students want to learn medicine or engineering at a local private university, where the expenditure could be much less than that of a foreign university. For example, a medical degree (MD) in the US costs between US$300,000 to 400,000 and takes as much as 11 years to earn after leaving high school. Whereas in Sri Lanka it would take about $60-70,000 and about 5-6 years to earn a MBBS degree. Besides, if such programmes are available in this country foreign students from developed countries would join our universities as the cost is much less.
Why ban private universities?
Today, education is the biggest business in the whole world because every living person has huge desires. In order to achieve it he ventures into the world in search of knowledge that could be achieved through education. The value of education has been clearly understood by most foreign countries and converted into a huge money spinning business.
Therefore, these rich foreign countries advertise their university programmes the world over. It’s the biggest money earner for the universities as well as to their mother lands. For example about 700,000 foreign students enter US universities every year and bring in about $15 billion per year. Similarly, other countries such as the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India or even poor Nepal are in the forefront of education business. Needless to say even so-called communist China has also ventured into the education business and advertises her university education programmes, especially the medical degree program locally (in Sri Lanka). Our country, in this respect is narrow minded and short sighted and doesn’t want to open education so that anyone can learn what they want. Most short-sighted politicians as well as the immature young who try to run the country alleges that it’s infringing in the “Free Education System” introduced by C.W.W.Kannangara. In fact the free education system is a myth; it’s also paid by the taxpayer, including the beggar on the road.
They have failed to realize that late Mr Kannangara never spoke against private educational institutes like the private schools. If he was alive today, he would have opened the private university education for those in need. Unfortunately, today most short-sighted people thing that opening of private universities etc is a devilish plan and would ruin free education. Its childish thinking; anyone who wants to learn in a state-owned school and the so-called free universities can do so. Others who want to learn any discipline and who cannot find a place in the free universities must be allowed to do so at their own expense. Such people must be credited for not being a burden on the treasury. Denying the right to education is a violation of basic human rights; besides, what right does one have to fight and stop the education of another; it may be his or her own sister or brother. This is sheer jealousy against another fellow student, which is a violation of the basic teaching of the Buddha that 75 % of our population follows.
Doesn’t harm free education
Some people, especially the low income people in this country fear that the private universities would harm or wipe out the free education in this country that was enjoyed by all irrespective of their wealth. All Governments so far developed the free education. Especially, under the present regime, the number of Government universities has increased and accordingly the number of students admitted too has gone up. Besides, the facilities for students too, have increased tremendously. These steps wouldn’t have been taken if the Government is planning to downsize free education. The present higher educational institutes would be continued and more would emerge in keeping pace with the increase in population. The Ministers and even the President made it clear to the people that this Government would not harm the free education. In a way, it would be better for the state-owned universities to run hand in hand with the private universities so that competition sets in and the state universities would have to deliver the goods to compete with private ones. Today, as there is no competition for state universities, their standards and performance have declined. Staff is under worked, with only two to four hours of active teaching a week; very little research is done but they enjoy lucrative salaries and other facilities compared to their counterparts in other countries.
In fact the reality could be that the private universities could be asked to pay a cess to develop the state universities and pay taxes as these are income generating education businesses. This could be an additional income to the state which could be utilized to enhance the starving facilities at state owned universities.
Violation of free economic policies of the Government
Sri Lanka had closed economic policies until 1977 where no imports were allowed without earning foreign exchange. No one was allowed to go abroad for higher education. Needless to say a large number of graduate students who got research and teaching assistance-ships were not allowed even to buy the air ticket to go to such places. Most commercial items were banned from importing; a motor car was a banned item unless the person earned foreign exchange. There were no private buses so the people suffered due to lack of quick transport system.
However, in 1977, the Government in power opened the economy, so people were free to move around the world. Most people who left mother Lanka returned with knowledge and opened and developed the economy, the food industry is one notable development. However, the Government at that time made a big mistake of not opening education, which is the cornerstone of development. Had we opened the education then, this land could have been much more developed today. The tragedy is that while any business including the private hospitals are allowed to run, the doors unfortunately are closed for fee levying universities that produce manpower for such hospitals. This is nothing other than a protection of professional monopoly. Doctors make their luxury living by working in private hospitals but they oppose establishing private medical schools, what selfishness is that.
Therefore, this Government under the stewardship of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is very popular among the general public, without listening to a handful of selfish ignorant short-sighted people must open up the education system.
Minister SB must be encouraged
Minister S.B. Dissanayake from the time he was in our university fought and did many good things for the student population. Now he is trying his best to do the same thing for the country, where he is trying to develop the universities. His achievements since he took the reins of higher education are commendable. He improved the facilities, student intake, and staff salaries and above all he masterminded to stop the dirty ragging in the universities.
Recently, he started to develop facilities to help needy students enter private universities by expanding education in line with the free economic enterprise system. It’s not damaging or ruining the free education of the country. He wanted both to run parallel with a greater competition, so that the state universities too would be developed.
His motive is correct and he had the foresight for the development of the university education in the country and it should have been supported by all politicians and the entire population. Even the economically poor Nepal where the per capita is just $562 has private universities to produce doctors, where our own students study at an exorbitant cost. Similarly, India and Bangladesh with much lower per capita than ours have opened up their education and earn billions of dollars annually in foreign exchange. In fact India started her open economic principle after we did.
Therefore, it’s high time, even at this late stage that we too open our education for the world so that our own students as well as foreign students could be benefited and provide us with badly needed foreign exchange to run the national free universities of the country.
(The writer was earlier based in the US. He is now attached to the Sri Jayawardenapura University) |
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