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| Sunday, 27 July 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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University bureaucracy blocks progress in research and development by THRISHANTHA NANAYAKKARA, B.Sc.(Eng), M.Sc.(Eng.) PhD, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Moratuwa. The 'Brain drain' is a topic that has drawn much attention in Sri Lanka. Most often people guess that the primary reason for brain drain is the low level of income for professionals who find better opportunities abroad. I interviewed a few professionals who had once returned to Sri Lanka after a thorough training at postgraduate level, but compelled to leave for good due to a few simple reasons other than the income.
I am an engineer who benefited from the free education system in this country. Upon graduation with a first class honours degree in engineering from the University of Moratuwa, I was trained in the Saga University Japan, at M.Sc. and PhD levels and then at Johns Hopkins University, USA, in a postdoctoral research fellowship program. During my stay abroad, I learnt one important thing. That is, a national culture to value continuous research and development has been one of the strongest pillars in the success of developed countries such as Japan and the United States. Therefore, about a month ago I decided to return to Sri Lanka and joined those who strive to contribute towards cultivating a healthy research and development culture in the University system of Sri Lanka. Highlight First let me highlight the fact that, the secret behind successful research programs in developed countries is not only good funding, but also the supportive environment laid down by the system. A researcher is like a meditator. His environment should have minimum disturbances from issues like red tape to procure equipment and handle personal research funds. I found that the Universities Act of Sri Lanka does the exact opposite regarding these basic requirements to nourish a good R&D culture in Sri Lanka. Let me explain a few simple cases with some of the experiences I had and suggest some solutions. I wanted to process some data that I had brought with me, for which I found the memory capacity in my official computer insufficient. In the US, if I wanted to order computer parts, it involves only two steps. I tell my professor about the requirement. He gives me his laboratory credit card, and I order the parts over the web sites of the suppliers. The world has come to the stage where ordering computer parts through the Internet is cheaper and faster. There are internet sites that allow you to compare prices from many suppliers and go for the cheapest. Suppliers also prefer you ordering parts through the internet because that reduces their administrative expenses. Let's look at how the Universities Act of Sri Lanka in its current form requires me to do it here. First, I have to ask somebody in charge of handling computers to fill a long paper form. Then it should be submitted to the head of the department. I did not feel good to burden the head of the department and waste his valuable time for a simple need like ordering a computer memory chip. You do not stop there. Having obtained the signature from the head of the department, the form goes to the Dean of the faculty. I felt very sorry for the valuable time I have to take from an officer like the Dean for a worthless job like this. But the Universities Act requires me to do so. By now, I have wasted time and resources about five times the worth of a memory chip. Then the form goes to the supplies department and stays in the long waiting list to be included in the log books. These are manually done and the whole university sends in such forms to this single supplies division. I can imagine the bottlenecks it creates. The supplies division then calls for quotations and the rest of the process is too long to be mentioned here. Obviously this nation wastes a lot of money paying for the time of many people to get simple work like this done. I asked some people in the computer laboratory how long it took to buy the computer I have now through this process. The answer was, "two years". The computers are out of date by the time it arrives in the University. Compare that to the time it will take in the US. It is just the time of a click of a button and the time to deliver. There are hidden adverse effects of this red-tape on the country's industrial growth. An example is that there are private industries who would prefer to have research collaborations with the state Universities rather than wasting a lot of money on foreign consultants. Yet, the complexity and inefficiency imposed by the Universities Act stay as a huge barrier for such fruitful research collaborations. If the case was otherwise, there could have been a lot of win-win situations where the industries can stay competitive through effective domestic research collaborations and the higher education system nourishing from a lot of outside funding. Engineers usually do not stop at just criticizing. We suggest solutions. Therefore, let me suggest two alternatives. One is to have the same red-tape but speed up the process with networking different centres. We can have an online form in the intranet, where I login and fill in a form and enter few optional suppliers with their prices and save it. While saving the form, it automatically e-mails a message to the head of the department. He can click on a single URL and enter his password to sign the form electronically. Then it automatically sends a message to the Dean and he does the same. Finally, the people in the supplies department notice a list of approved request forms with alternative suppliers and order the parts from the internet with their credit cards. Therefore, all that the Universities Act has to do is to amend provisions to allow the supplies department to maintain a credit card and order over the internet without going through tenders, but consider the alternatives given by the original person who placed the order, or go through the detailed price comparison given by the internet sites specializing on price watching. The second and the best solution I see is to decentralize the powers at least to the department level or laboratory level, so that individual entities can order parts for research purposes without going through any red-tape. There is another key issue that obstructs this decentralization. That is, the Universities Act has created another bottleneck by having a central accounting department for the whole University. Even if some researcher secures funds from an outside source, he is compelled to keep it with this central accounting department. Whenever, he wants to use his own funds, he has to submit request forms and wait till his request is attended to. Obviously the waiting line is very long because the whole University submits similar requests to this single accounting centre. The obvious solution is to decentralize most of the accounting and at least allow individual researchers to keep their own laboratory accounts for the money they have found from outside sources out of a lot of hard work. Both in the US and in Japan, the research laboratories had the freedom to maintain such independent accounts and use it efficiently for their research programs. Obviously that is one of the reasons why those research centres show faster progress in their projects. In any case, these were the sources of frustration for most of the highly trained professionals who decided to return to Sri Lanka after their training abroad but were compelled to leave the country. I do not know how long I will stay fighting with this system, but I will be very happy if the government or the public took some meaningful action to rectify these obvious drawbacks in our inefficient system that makes us lose a lot of professionals. Better rewards Finally, regarding the income of those who return, I believe that there should be better ways to reward those who engage in fruitful research work. Other than the basic salary, there should be provisions to reward them according to the number of postgraduate students they supervise or the number of publications they make in international journals or conferences etc. I am well aware of the fact that this government is busy working on noble objectives such as bringing about a lasting peace to this country, bridging the huge budget deficit etc. Yet, this issue deserves immediate public attention as an integral part of such efforts with a view to retain highly qualified professionals and to bring about a good R&D culture in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, I would like to suggest to the government that, in a committee that reviews amendments to the Universities Act, along with the normal senior Professors, it is good to have at least one who has completed his/her PhD within the last five years and an expatriate Sri Lankan who works in the faculty of a University reputed for efficiency. Anyhow, if the nation fails to somehow design a better system conducive to cultivate a good R&D culture in Sri Lanka by introducing new provisions in the Universities Act, Sri Lanka will not only keep on losing highly qualified professionals in whom the poor people have invested a lot of money, but also never enjoy a good research and development culture to build its own technology to solve its unique problems and our younger ones will have to continue running back thousands of years to find people like King Parakramabahu, just to be proud of national innovations. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
The root cause of all this was some outdated provisions of the very
Universities Act that is supposed to motivate professionals to return and
engage in fruitful research work for the country. I thought of
highlighting these issues because on returning to the country my own
experience confirmed these issues within the University system in Sri
Lanka.
