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By Ubayawansa Warnakulasooriya
The ever growing private education already accounts for over 40% of the country’s primary and secondary schooling as well as higher education. Almost the entirety of the pre-school system is a private enterprise.
The large majority of the fifth standard scholarship, O/L and A/L candidates rely heavily on private tuition classes for their examination success. Private English medium schools, popularly known as international schools, are operating in all major towns. There are similar schools exclusively for the Muslim community. Christian missionary schools continue to retain their traditional pride of place in the country’s education. Private higher educational institutes affiliated to a host of foreign universities are operating from Colombo for professional examinations in accountancy, architecture, engineering, management, law, marketing, hoteliering, etc. There are fee-levying institutes such as PIM and ICT associated with the state universities.
Thousands of Sri Lankan students are joining overseas universities each year to overcome the barriers here for medical and other professional education. Information technology could not have been the success it is today if not for the private IT educational institutions leading the way. The country’s aesthetic education owes much to the private dance, drama, and music academies. So do the elitist sports like cricket, rugby, and swimming to private coaching.
Private education has made such a strong presence in the country not by deliberate design but rather due to peoples’ innocent desire to see their children receive a well-rounded and English-oriented education which is of course the choice they do not mind paying for.
Across the world, “free education” and “fee levying education” mean different things to different nations and yield different results in different socio-political environments. For instance, in the USA, many universities which are all fee-levying irrespective of whether they are state or private are constantly high up in the global ranking and in the Nobel Prize almanac whilst even the best university in the socialist Cuba, namely the University of Havana where education is free, is nowhere near.
In Finland, education is completely free but as many as 94% of the beneficiaries thereof are well off people who are however, subjected to heavy taxes in lieu of free education or whatever social welfare benefits they receive from the state. Finland has been able to sustain its free education and other social welfare schemes because the Finns as a nation are collectively supportive of private enterprise that propels wealth generation which in turn has helped bring down the country’s poverty to minimal levels. It is also interesting to know that those classified as poor in Finland are perhaps better off than the average middle income earners of Sri Lanka. More importantly, the free education in a country like Finland is not what we perceive it to be like in Sri Lanka. For instance, the minimum entry level qualification for the teaching profession in Finland is not less than a Master’s Degree. Also, the goal of Finnish education is not to let the students compete for excellence to enter a university and obtain a degree but to provide opportunity for all to develop their brains and become useful citizens capable of adding value to their chosen fields of professions and contributing to the progress of humanity.
The socialist countries like Russia, China and Vietnam on the other hand are fast moving towards fee-levying private education and perhaps more aggressive than the capitalist countries in promoting private enterprise to propel their nations’ wealth generation. Even Cuba, after Fidel, is fast-tracking its economic reforms in step with the rest of the world, particularly the other fellow socialist countries.
However, we in Sri Lanka are yet to discern education as a process of mapping cognitive access to a mind that works well in harnessing the unlimited potential of the human spirit in an economic environment supportive of private enterprise. No wonder we are embroiled in howl and brawl about a private medical school like SAITM when among other things, one of the major problems in our higher education is not whether it is public or private but the lack of self-motivated seekers of knowledge who are passionate about exploring the universe of the brain. Consequently, the bulk of public expenditure on higher education is being wasted on the run-of-the-mill students particularly those indoctrinated in archaic proletariat politics, batch after batch, who are being used as cannon fodder by various groups of expedient political and professional interests. The undergrads who used to waste time in a host of non-academic subversive activity such as protest campaigns etc., are finishing their finals subpar only to force themselves into the government service to eke out a living, again at public expense, with little or no contribution to the country’s economy or the socio-political life of the nation. What they would do at best is like the lame bashing their crutches on the enemy’s head because it is the poor and the marginalised themselves in this country, who are ultimately paying the price for it.
Those who take to the street against SAITM now are no different from the generation that went on rampage against the introduction of computers to the Government and business establishments in the country in the 1980s, saying that the computers were a health hazard and a western conspiracy to put people out of jobs etc., at a time when, in a country like the USA, young Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple were cruising to become the world’s richest men in their pursuits of innovation in digital technology that changed the way we lived if not the course of humanity. They are also no different from those who sabotaged the North Colombo Medical College (NCMC) which now, in hindsight, is considered an ideal indigenous model of private medical education and that the physicians and surgeons passed out of NCMC some 25 years ago are known to have done this country proud and contributed in no small measure to the medical profession here and abroad.
In 1981, four Harvard physicians took an initiative to harness the medical profession’s influence to prevail over the world powers against nuclear proliferation. They were able to make such a great impact in so short a time that they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. After all, the GMOA need not work as hard as the Harvard physicians if it were to let our hospitals and the universities enjoy some fresh air of peace. All it takes to bring about a change in the paradigm is the humility and courage on the part of the GMOA to announce that it is willing to undertake a project to set up a model not-for-profit residential medical faculty of its own with a capacity to accommodate all bright but poor children in the country in particular and others at its option who are otherwise denied opportunity for medical education within the state university system due to various systemic constraints.
The GMOA may be able to mobilise funds for an endowment of say over Rs. 3 billion to set up such a not-for-profit medical school by collection of a small donation as say Rs. 150,000 each from the doctors currently numbering some 20,000 for such a lofty purpose.
The Government would no doubt be enthusiastic and supportive of such an initiative by the GMOA in many ways. For instance, it may allocate state land of say even 100 acres in a salubrious locality for a residential medical school just for asking, without objections from anybody, whilst the UGC and the SLMC may clear the regulatory grounds almost pre-emptively. The facilities for practical studies in clinical, community health, and forensics, may be allowed in the government hospitals on a platter unlike in the case of SAITM. The course fees of such a university may be just nominal in keeping with its not-for-profit objectives. Also, the deserving students may be given a sort of “learn now and pay later” financial assistance to meet the course fees so that none will have a cause to grumble about being left out on grounds of affordability.
These things are, however, easier said than done, and even if everything goes well, it will take a minimum of five years to complete such a project. Nevertheless, the project is worth giving a try, because it will help the GMOA and the anti-private lobby realise that the shouting of slogans clamouring for closure of SAITM or the “Hora Upaadhi Kade” is one thing, but the mobilising of financial and human resources, feasibility studies, architectural, and engineering planning and having to attend to details of hundreds of thousands of matters in the process of infrastructure development etc., for a new university like SAITM, is quite another.
