Prof. Herath tells NSBM Green Uni. students ‘graduation is the foundation not the building’

Member of Parliament Prof. Charitha Herath last week told students of Green University, National School of Business Management (NSBM) that graduation is the foundation and not the building, urging them to focus on other professional qualifications thereby adding more value to their lives and society.

He made this observation at the Convocation of NSBM. In his address Prof. Herath said: “I’d like to invite you to think differently about your graduation. More precisely, think about your life after graduation in a different perspective. Some people think that graduating from a university is the completion of the mission and sometimes they tend to wait till success comes their way automatically as part of the graduation. Then, if such success doesn’t come, they would easily get frustrated. Take the university degree as a starting point not as the end. And it would be more appropriate to think about the degree as a foundation, not as a building. If you live on a foundation, you will get wet when it is raining, and you will get burnt when the sun is hot. You have to build your own ‘house” or your ‘life’ based on the foundation that you got. Therefore, you have to focus on other professional qualifications to you which will add more value and more training in your capacity.”

Following are excerpts from Prof. Herath’s address. 

It is important to keep both ‘content and the form’ shining in an educational institute. An educational institute should be rich in its academic credentials with enough and capable human resources and needed physical facilities. Equally it should be rich with a beautiful and attractive setting. I think your university has blended these two qualities together in a wonderful way. 

Today you are passing an important milestone in your life. You entered this university a couple of years back and you are graduating today. You will start another round of your life, more empowered after obtaining the graduation. After today you will be recognised as a graduate in Software Engineering. I congratulate you for the successful achievements that you have accomplished.

Soft skills required

Second point that I would like you to focus on is some of the soft skills that you should develop in your life. I don’t want to repeat here that you have already gained hard skills in your respective subjects at the university. These professional, learned academic staff had spent many hours with you in teaching those hard sciences and hard skills within that science to you. But please keep in mind that all the graduates from your subject stream have also got the same kind of hard skills. Not only in your batch, even your seniors who graduated previously also have got that same knowledge. So, at the educational level you all are graduates with the knowledge of hard skills of the subject. So, when it comes to academic qualifications all of you are at the same level. If you need to show the society that you are better than others who got similar qualifications, you should develop some soft skills for yourself. What are those soft skills?  

(a) One is your ‘passion to work’. We could call it ‘will to work’. I would like to suggest to you that regardless of the job that you are going to undertake, show the employer or the company that you are ready for the challenge and you are willing to engage with the project. Laziness and ignorance should be thrown out from your life path.  

(b) ‘Communication ability’ is another important soft skill that you should keep on developing. It is true that you as a professional should need to know international languages. But the communication I mean here goes beyond speaking a language. You should be clear on your thinking and clear when communicating your thoughts. Sometimes you may have the best solution to a problem in your mind but unfortunately you will not be able to communicate that solution in a meaningful way to others. Sometimes you might not get the relevant acceptance within your company not due to the fact that you don’t have relevant answers but due to the fact that you don’t know how to communicate it in the relevant manner.

(c) Third soft skill I would like to note here is analytical skills that you should have in relation to societal requirements. You might get employment in the government sector or in private sector firms. Or you might start your own enterprise. Whatever it may be, the analytical approach to look at the clients, company needs, environments, legal base and societal needs, should be evaluated in a very analytical manner. That skill should be with you despite where you will work.

Team play and compromise 

Last point I would like to mention is the need to be a team player in your career and the importance of the ability to compromise. We have to always be mindful of the fact that we are working and living in a society. We cannot function alone in this world. So, we are encountering spaces of many others. We need to learn how to play our part as a member of a team but not with the ‘team is mine’ attitude. That team must be your company, your division or your family. But we need to learn not only how to win, but also how to play our role. 

Compromise is another important word that you should keep in your mind. Compromising means to get ready to discuss, some time to disagree and to deviate from the basic positions. Sometimes compromise just gives others the opportunity to recognise you and you would get the acceptance to your own ideas. Compromise is one of the key skills that you should develop in your life. 

Let me quote a very interesting saying on compromise made by a famous USA president Barack Obama. President Obama made this remark at a Graduation ceremony like this at Harvard University in 2016. He says it in a political way. (I quote) “And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that’s never been the source of our progress. That’s how we cheat ourselves of progress”. (Unquote)

I think we should not only focus on getting self-satisfaction without getting the work done that we are assigned. We should be ready to get the work done with the satisfaction we have. 

With that remark, let me congratulate you all again for your achievement and wish you all the success for your future.