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By Harini Amarasuriya, Camena Gunaratne, Deepika Udugama and Priyan Dias
In the debate
that is raging regarding higher education in Sri Lanka today among the many
issues being discussed, a crucial one is that of the quality of the national,
public funded universities. Public
universities are accused of not fulfilling their role effectively; academics
have been charged with producing ‘unemployable’ graduates, of failing as
teachers and researchers and also for being removed and uninvolved in issues
affecting the larger community. University academics have also been accused of
shirking their responsibilities and of exploiting academic freedom by simply
not even turning up for work.
Academics in turn
have pointed out that resources for higher education have been steadily
dwindling and that salaries for university staff are far from adequate. This they have pointed out leads to
difficulties in recruiting and retaining the best academics in state universities. Many with post-graduate qualifications
obtained abroad from public funds do not return to Sri Lanka creating many
unfilled vacancies in universities. All
this paints a woeful picture of public universities in Sri Lanka as
uninspiring, poor quality institutions that are failing miserably in fulfilling
its mission. This picture is usually one
of the arguments that is presented to justify the alternative of private
universities.
While public
universities are being lambasted for failing to fulfil their mandate on the one
side, initiatives to establish mechanisms for ‘Quality Assurance’ in the
universities are underway. Already, a
Quality Assurance and Accreditation Council has been established by the
UGC. This Council has developed Codes of
Practices for teaching, learning, assessment, staff development etc and carries
out institutional and subject reviews regularly. The CVCD, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors
and Directors have been closely involved in developing these Codes of Practices
and QAA frameworks. The proposed highly secretive bill to establish private
universities also includes the establishment of a Quality Assurance and
Accreditation Council with wide ranging powers over both public and private
universities and the composition of this council as well as its mandate is
highly problematic.
What is missing
however, is a discussion on how we define and more importantly measure quality
in higher education. While all of us, reluctantly or not are
increasingly involved in the quality assurance process, what we are not doing
is engaging in a process of critical reflection
on whether public universities are fulfilling its mandate, indeed what
the mandate of universities should be, and if there should be public
accountability in universities and if so to whom and how we should be
accountable. Our absence from these
discussions have meant that this space has been occupied by those who are
determining for us what higher education means, how we should be held
accountable and to whom. In the process,
the whole idea of higher education itself is being transformed.
Ideally, the
quality of higher education needs to be considered in terms of two important
areas: the quality of the educational
process experienced by students and the quality of the contribution that the
university community makes in terms of producing knowledge. In our own system,
we are supposed to be assessed on our contribution to teaching, research and
national development. The latter can also be linked to the relevance of the
university community for society at large.
Traditionally, universities were expected to be self-regulatory; quality
control was the responsibility of academics of each discipline. University
autonomy and self-determination were fiercely guarded as part of this process
of self-regulation. These were
considered key characteristics of university culture.
On the other
hand, the new quality assurance mechanisms and regulatory frameworks have been
critiqued by academics worldwide for bringing in an ‘audit culture’ (Shore and
Wright 1999; Apple 2005) that undermines university autonomy and academic
professionalism. These new mechanisms
have been critiqued as part of a larger movement changing the very nature of
universities within a new market logic and governance structure. Consequently, what becomes important is only
what can be measured; we are assessed on how many graduates we produce, how
many of these graduates gain employment, how many research papers we write, how
many conferences we attend and how many patents we obtain. There is no critical reflection on what any
of these measurements actually mean.
Instead, these measurements have become so much a part of our everyday
thinking that we do not stop to think whether the way higher education is being
transformed by these measurements is acceptable or even appropriate.
In Sri Lanka
this transformation can be seen in the increasing pressure to ensure the
employability of graduates, to design courses that are demanded by the industry
and to introduce courses that teach students ‘soft skills’, IT and English to
graduates. There is also huge pressure
on courses especially in the humanities that are seen as not labour market
worthy. This is based on the assumption
that the current university experience is producing graduates who are
unemployable, that courses being offered are out of step with labour market
needs and that lack of employability is linked to specific skills which are not
linked to subject knowledge. But more
importantly, it defines the mandate of
universities and the objective of higher education in a very particular
manner.
Since the issue
of the employability of graduates is a central preoccupation in universities
today, this issue needs to be considered carefully. Is the role of university education to be
measured solely on the basis of the employment rate of its graduates? For instance, when discussing the issue of
employability, is it also not necessary to talk about the quality of secondary
education? The issue of employability is
not unimportant; of course we want our graduates to be gainfully employed. Whether simply adjusting higher education to
meet industry needs is an adequate response to the employment problems of
graduates is questionable.
Defining
employability simply in terms of meeting market or industry needs is extremely
restricting. For one thing, market and
industry needs are only defined by the current context; it does not take into
consideration what a future market may look like. It also has an extremely
limited notion of what skills are required in the real world. In fact, while it is most certainly true that
employment does not depend solely on the degree of subject knowledge, but also
on the an employee’s ability to think critically, logically and being able to
understand the social context in which they operate these are not skills that
can be nurtured through restricting the scope of higher education or by
introducing leadership training or soft skills courses. Moreover, not all societal needs are
determined by the market nor can they be valued by market logic. For instance, society needs artists,
philosophers, human rights activists, politicians, teachers, spiritual leaders
whose value cannot be determined by the vagaries of the share market. What is alarming about the transformation
that is taking place in higher education today is that it restricts our
understanding of what a quality higher education actually means.
Furthermore, the
issue of the quality of higher education cannot be separated from the dwindling
resources within the university system.
Sri Lanka spends less than 2% of its GDP on education in its entirety.
Of this, what higher education receives is woefully inadequate. Paltry salaries for university staff is a
serious issue: how the best people can
be recruited and retained within a system that fails to adequately compensate
them for their services is a serious question.
Coupled with severe shortages in resources for research and teaching,
universities are fighting to attract those who have serious academic
ambitions. Also, over the years, the
space for universities to engage in nationally relevant work has been
restricted. The politicisation of policy
development process, the lack of state patronage for research and development has
meant that universities are being sidelined from society. What
all this means is that when we talk about the crisis in higher education there
are many issues that need to be considered.
The questions we
have about how our work is being assessed, the decreasing investment in higher
education and the growing interference with the autonomy of universities does
not however mean that there is no need for a vigorous discussion on the quality
of higher education in this country and the need for public universities to be
accountable. Sri Lankan universities have continued to serve the country
despite huge resource and administrative deficiencies; we have produced high
quality graduates and there are hardworking, talented, widely respected
academics serving in our institutions.
But, it is also true that many students have serious complaints about
the quality of their educational experience and that some of us are not
fulfilling either our teaching or research responsibilities let alone
contributing to national development.
Many of us turn
to an idealised past, a so called ‘golden era’ of higher education in Sri Lanka
when confronted with the challenges we are facing today. But lamenting an idealised past is not
sufficient. It is also important that we
examine existing practices within our universities critically. We also need to
face the fact that higher education today is facing complex challenges that
require creative and innovative solutions as well as better management and
administrative structures which we lack in our institutions. We also need to
reflect critically on the kind of university culture that exists in our
universities. For instance, the insidious guru-gola relationships that
permeate our university culture stifle independent and critical thinking. Some of our colleagues do not fulfil their
responsibilities as teachers and researchers but they are not held
accountable. Promotions have become
highly politicised often encouraging academics to simply toe the line in order
to advance their careers. Academics who
are not the favourites of the administration are often persecuted. Let us also not forget that universities can
be and indeed are sites of serious conflicts which are often resolved, with our
complicity in very undemocratic ways.
Our universities also have been sites where minority views and opinions
have been suppressed, where gender stereotypes are reinforced and cultural
diversity is frowned upon. As academics
we have either remained silent and uninvolved on many issues of national importance
or simply sided with ruling regimes often for personal benefit.
Critically
reflecting on the mandate and state of public universities and higher education
is important for two very important reasons:
firstly, it will help us identify what it is we want to defend in our
system and also will ensure that the space for improving quality is not
occupied by those who are only preoccupied with ensuring that higher education
is turned into a commodity for sale in the market or in introducing a form of
managerialism and audit culture that stifles and restricts university education
and culture. Let us also not make the
mistake of simply blaming politicians for this situation. Many of those who are defending the new
discourse of privatisation and an audit culture are from within our own
ranks. We need to analyse how it is that
we have allowed ourselves to be persuaded so easily about things that are
essentially contradictory to our own long term interest and certainly to
fulfilling our social responsibility.
Thus, while
there can be no disagreement about the need for quality and accountability
within the university system, what is urgently needed is a discussion on how
these are defined. What are the problems that need to be addressed and how best
can they be addressed? Are the current
quality assurance mechanisms encouraging this kind of discussion or simply
transforming universities in completely new directions? Are those directions acceptable? Are those directions appropriate for the Sri
Lankan context? What alternatives can
the academic community propose?
Further, if
universities are to be accountable, to whom should they be accountable and for
what should they be accountable? The
current audit culture has been critiqued as part of the process in which
academic institutions are being reinvented as financial bodies. Processes that were traditionally used to
audit financial institutions are being used for universities and this has
become normalised to such a degree that it is no longer even questioned. Furthermore, although conceptually it is
argued that universities need to be accountable to the public and students in
particular, the current process of accountability is in reality to the UGC and
the Ministry (or more recently, simply to the Minister) of Higher
Education. Whether this process ensures
that universities address the problems they are currently facing is
debatable.
What is clear is
that instead of acquiescing to the external imposition of standards and
meanings of quality and accountability in public universities and in higher
education, we too need to be actively involved in finding some of these
answers. We must demand and get from the
higher authorities the space to do so;
or if not create our own spaces to enter into a meaningful dialogue in an open
and transparent environment.
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