Progressing and Protecting Higher Education
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sri Lanka has managed to secure a high place in the global and regional indexes of literacy rates with a percentage of 98.7 percent youth literacy rate, being the highest in the South Asian region.
Sri Lanka is also one of the only two countries in the region recognised by the United Nations as a country ‘achieving human development’. Although, there are a wide range of options and possibilities available to students when it comes to higher education in Sri Lanka, the entire system has immense room for improvement.
At the end of the 20th century universities became more centralized with increasing government control. Fifteen major universities in Sri Lanka are under the University of Grants Commission while many others are administered by several other government ministries. Though entrance is free, few get accepted and graduate.
However, recently some institutes and private companies gained the permission needed to grant their own degrees, such as Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. Additionally, there are many professional and internationally recognized bodies operating in Sri Lanka such as ACCA and CIMA.
Present Limitations
Currently, the present state of higher education in Sri Lanka is as challenging as it is unprecedented. Higher education institutions have switched to online learning as there has mostly been a full closure of schools for the entire year.
The present method of bulk transfer of information from a screen is surprisingly proving ineffective. This is especially problematic in tertiary level education where students are expected to leave with the vocational skills, abilities, and knowledge needed in their future careers. Both teachers and students are experiencing the difficulties of the poor online learning platform from exams to assignments and practicals.
Many students are forced to passively learn with unfocused environments, mindsets, and ridiculously frustrating timetables. The integration of technology into learning can be improved upon greatly as online learning may be here to stay and not doing so will lead to severe issues in Sri Lanka’s higher education system.
Additionally, admissions to state universities are competitive, limited, and standardised. The admissions are based on a student’s Z score from their GCE Advanced Level examinations rather than an island-wide ranking system.
Though this results in a district-based representation of students allowing for students from rural areas to be accepted, there is a disparity in admissions of students in remote areas and urban areas. Furthermore, less than 16,000 students who qualify are admitted – and only half eventually graduate. Due to this strict method and the competitiveness of admissions many students opt for further education abroad.
This is problematic as the continuous brain-drain of the country’s best is fueled on.
Moreover, as of 2017 there were 43,000 unemployed graduates in Sri Lanka.
This can be attributed to the country’s low economic growth and the saturation of the public sector. Yet, the problem also lies in the fact that many students acquire an unemployable skill set during their degrees and leave with a lack of technical knowledge.
Lastly and quite prominently is the issue of ragging. Students preserve this archaic tradition under the claim that it is a social equaliser and simply a year-round class bonding activity.
However, this issue results in severe psychological and physical harm caused and even deaths.
Private Higher Education
The presence of private universities in the country comes with both successes and setbacks. On one hand, private universities fill the void created by limited placements in state universities. Only 15% of students qualified to sit for Advanced Level Examinations are selected for enrollment in state-sponsored universities – a concerningly low number.
These students can then vouch to receive private higher education as an alternative. Several private higher education institutions remain affiliated with universities in western countries.
On the other hand, private university curriculums are largely limited to business, marketing, and managerial subjects, and are considerably costly to students. An additional issue that often arises is that of ambiguous and unconfirmed accreditation – marketed as providing degrees tantamount to those of foreign higher education, this has not always been the case.
Revising the Higher Education Framework
When it comes to revising the current framework, Band-Aid solutions are not enough to heal the faults in Sri Lanka’s higher education system. Reforms are required on not one, but multiple levels: policy implementation, maintenance, and regulation.
Increased government expenditure should be allocated towards bridging the disparity between urban and rural education in order to stimulate a greater number of students who qualify for university entrances, as well as expanding the country’s technological outreach, so as to bridge the digital divide formed by COVID-19.
Additionally, it is imperative that school and university curriculums be updated with regards to current and foreign education – thus enabling university students to receive a quality higher learning experience paralleled to that of overseas universities.
Meanwhile, government action could also be directed towards subsidising the establishment of more state universities – especially in the more rural districts of the country. State universities should work towards extending the number of student placements available in order to open up their doors to more keen young learners.
In fact, Sri Lanka’s government recently implemented the “Non-Resident City University Programme”, aimed at producing “a graduate with the required professional skills to meet the human resource needs of a specific area.
These universities will set up district-wise and enroll students only within the district,”, as stated by University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Professor Sampath Amaratunge. $5 million has been invested by the government in the implementation of the project.
Apart from this, private universities can take steps to confirm accreditations and to establish increased affiliations with foreign universities in order to open up Sri Lanka’s education system. That will in return minimise the brain- drain out of the country and reduce the financial outflow of cash into foreign nations and universities.
This will also result favourably to the Sri Lankan Economy.
Session XIV of SLMUN will be held on the 3rd and 4th of December 2021 at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH), Colombo, Sri Lanka. Registrations for delegates, admins and IPC delegates are now open until the 10th November 2021.
For further details, head on over to our website on
www.slmun.org , or
please contact us via:
Email – cda@slmun.org /
pr@slmun.org
Telephone – +94 71 801 3722 / +94 71 444 9694 / +94 76 898 9763
- Umaama Hussain and
Malaika Sequeira (News and
Media Team- SLMUN 2021)