Now what?

The early hours of Sunday was an exciting period for thousands of families countrywide as they scrambled to check the Advanced Level exam results of their children with mixed feelings. Many parents were happy but the majority will wait in trepidation for the dreaded ‘cut off’ marks to see whether their children have a chance to enter a local university.

The future is a scary place for anyone. When it comes to higher education pitfalls and gaining skills that can be valuable in the job market, many parents falter on how best to use their limited resources to equip their children for the rat race ahead.

Even the media, which enthusiastically publishes in-depth interviews with top-ranked students and their respective families on the methods of study and tuition classes they attended, tends to steer clear of the challenge faced by thousands of students who have scored averagely or badly at the exams. 

Thousands of students who have gained basic marks to enter a local university will find their dreams dashed simply because the public higher education system does not have the capacity to absorb the vast majority of them.

Despite a lack of capacity hobbling local universities for several decades, they remain highly sought-after simply because few parents have the money to send their children abroad. For thousands of parents the options are clear though very limited. They can send their children to a private higher education institution, encourage them to sign up for external degrees or push them towards vocational training.

The first option has several pitfalls. Private higher education institutions in Sri Lanka are expensive and have been criticised for not maintaining standards or providing facilities on par with their exorbitant fees. Many of them should be monitored by the University Grants Commission (UGC) but are not and feed dubious universities in other countries that are not well-recognised.

Students that accept the second option face similar issues where they are neglected as the already overburdened university system struggles to provide lectures, course material and even exams on time. In many instances the degrees are not on par with international standards (this is true even for youth who manage to be internal students) and the discontent often spills over into protests that are sometimes brutally dealt with by the Government.   

Vocational training is woefully funded and seen as an option only for the low-performing students. Even here there are questions over standards and employability. Across the board in all categories students stumble to learn crucial soft skills such as English, IT and personality building efforts that often leave them uncompetitive in job markets where foreign-educated students often get the best picks.      

Parents who are themselves educated and savvy enough to root through these options can navigate effectively through this labyrinth to secure quality higher education for their children. Others do not fare too well. 

It is shocking that Sri Lanka’s higher education system has been allowed to disintegrate to such a level even while successive governments attempt to promote the country as a knowledge hub or push towards a knowledge economy. Unless there is a shift in focus from the few to the majority, all the Advanced Level exam will do is cut off chances for a prosperous future.