are public universities fulfilling their mandate

8/3/2019 Are Public Universities Fulfilling Their Mandate

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Are Public Universities in Sri Lanka fulfilling their mandate?

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. Publicuniversities 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 creatingmany 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 andDirectors 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 beaccountable. 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 responsibilityof academics of each discipline. University autonomy and self-determination were fiercely guarded


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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 employees 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.


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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 minorityviews 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 forthis situation. Many of those who are defending the new discourse of privatisation and an audit


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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.

are public universities fulfilling their mandate

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