Education: Making the right choice

Education reforms in Sri Lanka have been a subject for debate since 1972. However, due to the intense politicisation of the education system in the country, governments after governments had failed to implement sweeping reforms to remedy the fundamental problems at both the secondary and tertiary levels.

By Faizal Salieh

Though right-thinking academics, administrators and the business community had all along recognised the core issues and had consistently argued for change, vested political interests embedded in the system and a largely misguided rural parental and student population strongly resisted any change to the status quo.

The result was a deteriorating education system, particularly at the tertiary level, over the years despite the continued cry of private sector employers about the growing unsuitability of most of the graduates coming out of our universities in the real world of work.

It has taken many long years for the nation as a whole to realise that the problem lied at the core of our education system and its politicisation. What was sad and a heinous economic crime on the nation was the refusal of politicians in power, at various points of time in the years bygone, to deal with the problem with a firm hand whilst public taxation was continuously used to support the national education bill.

The fundamental problem with our education system is its quality and relevance. A situation analysis and critical examination of the education system as it exists today reveals a form and structure of education that is seriously limited in its capacity to respond to the contemporary and changing requirements of the employment markets, be they local or global.

The net result is the continual production of a stream of graduates who are less and less employable, precipitating huge economic and social costs upon the people of this country. The problem is most pronounced in higher education and is acute with regard to students graduating in the arts, humanities and social sciences, which faculties of study account for the largest number of student admissions and graduations in our universities.

The present system is structured upon a model that is supply driven, works on a 100% state subsidy (popularly known as “free education”, though nothing is really free and it is the poor who ultimately pay for it!) is centralised, owned and controlled by the State (and therefore bureaucratised and politicised), is not merit based, has no accountability or performance management system and is not linked to market considerations.

Seemingly, the single key driver of the model is the principle of social equity, which was the core value of a political ideology to which historical Sri Lankan governments have subscribed to since 1944. Landmark political decisions taken in this regard were the free education scheme fathered by C.W.W. Kannangara in 1944, Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s ‘Sinhala Only’ policy in 1956 and the nationalisation of schools and the introduction of ‘swabasha’ in universities (which effectively phased out the English medium) in 1960.

The political thought of the time (it even exists today in some quarters) based upon this equity principle, was that the doors of education will be open to all and not be limited to a privileged few and therefore would enhance national well being. English was associated with social elitism and a mountain of hatred was drummed up against it in the minds of innocent rural students, particularly at the university level, by scheming politicians and like-minded academics. In the wake of the ‘Kaduwa’ hate syndrome, students from rural backgrounds chose to learn French and German at our universities rather than English!

The model won the admiration of the people, mostly those in the rural sectors, essentially on two counts – (i) the parents did not have to pay for the education of their children and (ii) they had the comfort that their children will learn in their own mother tongues. They also believed that their children would have greater access to higher education and would not be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their affluent counterparts when it came to education and employment.

Needless to say, merit had no real place in this equity-driven model. State ownership and control also led to the politicisation of the education system undermining the principles of good governance and academic freedom. We have also seen a propensity among our State politicians to physically expand and build new schools and universities without sufficient emphasis on the quality and relevance of their academic programmes, teachers and students.

The truth, however, is that over the years the results of this education system have not measured up to the expectations and demands of the markets that employ its products. The growing phenomena of “educated” unemployed graduates in the country are a manifestation of the mismatch of this education model with the realities of the world of work and employment. What we now have is a growing problem of unemployability of local graduates rather than unemployment itself.

The strong equity emphasis in the model led to the relegation of all other considerations with regard to quality, efficiency and effectiveness in the system and, above all, the relevance of education to contemporary market requirements.

Over the years the quality, efficiency, effectiveness and relevance of our education system and its products have been clearly on the decline and the problem as it exists today is most pressing than ever before, particularly when the economy is poised for a quantum take-off in the post-conflict era. State ownership and management of the education system has not helped to bring about the required responses, both at the policy and institutional levels, to meet the realities in the external market environment.

So we see a situation where more and more students continue to pass through the system only to realise their unemployability when they start knocking at the doors of employment! It must also be noted that students in our universities graduate at an age of 25-26 years compared to their foreign counterparts who graduate at 22 years, a clear loss of three to four years due to the inefficiencies in the system. The more discerning and affluent students, largely from urban backgrounds, opt to enter foreign universities or choose non-university courses of study at professional institutes of learning and not enter local universities for this reason.

In the final analysis, the “equality” principle of Sri Lanka’s free education system has resulted in placing all students entering our universities on the Lowest Quality Denominator! The students get low quality education free and have to go through a long wait for employment! This process has resulted in social tensions and unrest among the graduates.

Sri Lanka’s State-owned universities are not in the World’s Top 100 list, not even among the Top 500! The University of Colombo is ranked 2,185; the Moratuwa University is in the 2,198th position and the University of Sri Jayewardenepura is 5,330th! The truth is: Cheap low quality education cannot demand market wages.

Who then pays for this vicious cycle? It is the poor who ultimately pay for all this. But sadly the rural poor do not understand this; most of our academics are enjoying the ‘comfort zone’ they find themselves in at our State universities and therefore would not challenge it... so the politicians have continued to perpetuate it.

We need to understand the two external contexts which have a direct impact on our education system.

Globally, we see the rapid disappearance of boundaries between markets. They call this globalisation. Whether we like it or not, globalisation is taking place and the daunting challenge before the developing countries is what they can do to increase their competitive positions in the global marketplace. That would necessarily involve the preparation and positioning of a country’s human resources under a global competitiveness index.

Today, more than ever before in human history, the wealth or poverty of a nation depends on the quality of its education system. Sri Lanka cannot afford to stay out of this context, and still hope to achieve the rates of economic growth and social well being her people desire. The pure socialist model of State- owned and State-controlled education management has notably failed the world over – the historical forces that had championed this model have also since changed their political ideologies and stances and this includes countries like Russia. We also see changes emerging in China. China now has more than 800 private higher education institutions. Even the French have decided to learn English! So are the Chinese.

In the local context, we have seen a gradual but dramatic shift in the profile and constitution of the employment market over the past 40 years. The private sector now employs about 45% of Sri Lanka’s workforce. The Government’s vision, in the post-conflict era, is to make Sri Lanka a miracle in Asia.

Successive governments in the past 20 years have looked upon the private sector to be the “engine of national economic growth” and the pressing question before us today is from where do the country’s employers get good quality people to run the engine of growth?

If our education system is unable to produce the quality that the market demands, should employers look to overseas to import the human resources they require to run their businesses and organisations? Or, can we create an education system that will understand the requirements of the market and produce the kind of people employers want to hire?

It is not in the best interest of Sri Lanka’s national pride to have an education system that is unable to meet market requirements and for the country to be importing expatriates to manage its business economy. Such a situation will also entail higher employment costs to businesses.

What is urgently needed is the collective willingness of all the stakeholders in the education landscape (i.e. teachers, students, parents, policy makers, employers) to review the present model on which our education system runs and replace it with one that will work towards producing high quality people with a set of knowledge, skills and attributes that will enable our country to enhance its competitiveness in the global market place and become the Asian miracle we want it to be.

The need for educational reforms has been recognised and discussed in our country since 1972. Over this 30 year period, various reforms have been written and placed on the cards but their implementation has been painstakingly slow.

A lack of clarity as to the most appropriate model for education, the lack of political will, the lack of know-how to effectively market the reforms to the various stakeholders (thus precipitating apprehensions and misperceptions in their minds) and the lack of change management skills to drive the reforms through the various resistance blocks at institutional levels have been the main reasons why successive governments have met with little success in implementing education reforms. So the reforms have remained at policy level and not had much practical effect at institutional level.

Meanwhile, the State is finding it increasingly hard, if not impossible, to fund the education system which is largely State owned and controlled – though a small number of fee-levying institutes and “international schools” that offer English-based education and foreign university/professional qualifications, all patronised by students from discerning and affluent urban families, have emerged over the past few years.

Recent statistical data reveal that State expenditure on education in 2009 amounted to 2.8% of GDP compared to India’s 3.7%, Malaysia’s 8% and about 4% in Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines. Only 15-16% of GCE ‘A’ level qualified students are admitted to the State universities every year – i.e. about 11,000 to 13,000 students per year – though about 60-65% are eligible for admission.

At any given time, there are about 46,000 students in the State universities (and another 20,000 at the Open University) making up just 2% of the total students in the entire education system. There are about 16,000 students registered for the external degree courses offered by the State universities. On the other hand, it is estimated that about 6,000 students from Sri Lanka seek foreign education every year and the associated foreign exchange costs to the country is about Rs. 6 billion per year.

The hunger for quality education is outstripping the ability of governments the world over to provide and pay for it. Sri Lanka is probably the only country in the world where university education remains wholly State owned and State controlled. The difficulties faced by successive governments to continue funding education against a rapidly falling product quality curve and the growing dissatisfaction with the system amongst discerning and forward-thinking academics, teachers, administrators, students, parents and employers in the wake of new local and global market realities, all put together necessitate a clarion call for an immediate replacement of the current education model.

What, then, is the right model for us? There are three possible models:

nThe traditional post-colonial model which is wholly State-owned, State-controlled, State funded and pivoted on a 100% State subsidy strongly driven by the equity principle. This is the model underlying our present education system and we know the results.

nA model where education is fully owned and managed by private investment with the role of the State being limited to that of a facilitator and a referee. Such a model will have a network of philanthropic entities, profit-seeking entities, non-profit and non-governmental organisations operating in the education system and would allow for both vertical and horizontal differentiation.

nA well-developed network could attract large philanthropic funds to drive academic research activities. Merit, academic, administrative and financial autonomies, accountability and fee levying are essential cornerstones of this model. The model releases the financial burden on the State budget and entails a student loan scheme, and full and part scholarship schemes to assist the less affluent and the underprivileged students subject to merit.

This model has its downside risks in that it does not adequately safeguard the public interest; the supply of business and individual philanthropic funds towards education and research are relatively uncommon in developing countries unless there are sufficient tax incentives; it can shut out the intake of deserving students who do not have the ability to pay; and can lead to unregulated and poor quality higher education with “garage universities” awarding fraudulent degrees (there are many cases of franchised university programmes where students in developing countries are offered substandard education whilst the parent institution meets quality standards in its home country).

Equity is not a consideration of this model and to that extent it is unlikely to have sufficient all-round stakeholder appeal.

A hybrid model that is fundamentally market-based, combines both public and private partnerships in the ownership, funding and management of education; and allows for the dynamic co-existence of both State-owned and private-owned institutions in the education landscape. The role of the State is limited to facilitating curriculum development, competitive examinations including world examinations and degrees benchmarked against world class standards; and monitoring like a referee the quality of development and delivery of education in the system.

The model also allows students the choice of ‘what’ and ‘where’ they wish to learn (which is denied to them in the first model). A salient feature of this model is that it overcomes the two key downside factors of the two previous models, namely: (i) a wholly State-owned education system is ill-positioned to meet the demands for excellence in academic quality and access and (ii) a pure private education system does not adequately protect the public interest – a critical factor that requires consideration in view of the underprivileged segments of our society.

Both the pure private and hybrid models are capable of attracting loanable funds from the market to finance student entrants who have the ability to become employable on graduation and the capacity to repay the loans. The fee levying aspect of the model would ensure the quality of teacher recruitments, curriculum development and the relevance and marketability of graduating students. Again, both models are likely to attract employers to pre-identify students and offer placements and attract students from overseas (reversing the present order).

Both models are built on the premise that education decisions must be left to the educators; that educators and teachers should be at the apex of the system and be well paid so that there is no impediment to attracting quality people to the academic profession; that the system must be performance oriented (performance be judged by the quality of teaching, the kind of jobs and advanced education placements won by the graduating students, the number of students attracted, the facilities for learning and the quality of research done); that the system allows for diversity and competition and the market determines the value of education.

Of the above three models, our country has had enough experience with the first one for it to be able to now conclude, given the results of the model over the past 50 years or so, the new market realities, the future local and global trends and the non-sustainability of the education system in the absence of State funding support, that it is clearly not the education model that is tenable and one that can help steer Sri Lanka’s future growth and development in a globalised environment. This leaves us to envision and make a choice between the second (i.e. a pure private education system) and the third (i.e. a hybrid system) models.

In a nutshell, what Sri Lanka needs is an education system that is decentralised and community-based (and therefore de-politicised); a system that is open to be rated by market considerations and scholarship and benchmarked against world class standards; a system that values and allows academic, financial and administrative autonomy and accountability (so that schools and universities are empowered to choose whom they want to teach, what they want to teach and how they want to teach) and a system that values and operates on balanced equity.

Given the profile, social constitution and income classification of Sri Lanka’s population, the education subsidy, in my opinion, should not be totally removed. Yet, at the post-secondary and tertiary levels of education, the subsidy can be efficiently managed by not making it available to all students as a matter of right but by limiting it to the depressed areas (i.e. a horizontal subsidy) and to the needy students (i.e. a vertical subsidy), both linked to a performance based system of evaluation.

In the present moment of truth, an education system which facilitates and allows both State-owned and private schools and universities to co-exist, has a strong central regulatory system to ensure quality and relevance and provides a targeted State subsidy scheme as described above would be the best way forward for our country.

Sri Lanka should not waste any more time but prepare itself an education agenda to make a firm and speedy departure from the present system to the hybrid model with a targeted subsidy scheme. Such a move would necessarily require a process of revising the rules and regulations of our education system, communicating to the student and parent populations the inherent weaknesses of the present wholly State-owned higher education system and the true and greater value of the hybrid model and firmly dealing with all forms of resistance to the change.

It is not the direct cost of education we should look at but the net benefit over a life time. We should take an ‘investment view’ on national education. Our students must have the freedom to choose what they want to learn; and the education institutions must have the freedom to choose what they want to teach, whom they want to teach and how they want to teach.

All universities, both in the State and non State sectors should be independently ranked on a competitive index benchmarked to world standards and State funding to the State universities must be based on performance. There should be a central regulator which regulates the quality of curriculum content, quality of examinations and teaching methodology.

I am delighted to see the situation changing today, particularly the present Government’s response to this longstanding problem. The Minister of Higher Education and his Ministry Secretary have come forth courageously and firmly to deal with the problem; many steps are being taken in the right direction with conviction and commitment at the State level, including amendments to the Universities Act and the liberalisation of the system to allow private universities to operate side by side with the State-owned universities.

As part of the embedded resistance in the system to change (at the academic, administrative and student levels) we are also seeing demonstrations and protests at some of the universities and such acts of resistance are likely to increase in the coming months. One major causal factor behind most of the student unrests at our State universities is the influence wielded by the country’s political parties in student activities within the universities.

For example, elections to student councils within the universities are contested by several student groups; each group is attached to one of the national level political parties such as the JVP, Communist parties, SLFP, UNP. The JVP-linked groups usually dominate the student activities. The absurdly sadistic types of student ragging that has gone on at our State universities are also a clear manifestation of the political motivations. All this has been allowed in the name of ‘intellectual freedom,’ ‘freedom of expression’ and similar clichés. The results have been disastrous to the entire process of university education in the country!

The time has come to ban student groups from having attachments and connections with external political parties and the universities from being platforms for political party activities. Student Council elections and all other activities must be freed from external political party interferences. University students must be told that they must spend their time reading for their degrees, not engaging in political activities.

The academics must be told that they must spend time teaching their respective subjects of study and engaging in academic research rather than playing political games with students inside the universities. The students must be made to feel accountable for the public tax funds that are being deployed to enable them get a “free education”.

The academic community must be made to realise that their salaries are paid from public taxes. The State must be equally, if not more, accountable to ensure that the education and administration processes at universities are freed of political influence and involvement.

I admire the present Government’s resolution to deal with these issues with a firm hand rather than cave into the mischievous hands of vested interests that have been destroying our education system both from within and without for many years. The present regime is well positioned for this purpose and must be congratulated on its new direction.

(The writer, Faizal Salieh, is a former Chairman of the HR & Education Committee of The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce; a product of two local State-owned universities and holds a First Class Honours Degree in Economics – with specialisation in Banking and Finance – and a Masters Degree in Business Administration. He is the Managing Director/CEO of Amana Investments Limited.)