Editorial

Security

Politics

World

Letters

Sports

Obituaries

Archives

by Prof. J. N. Oleap Fernando (Excerpts from the chief guest's address at the prize giving of S. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia, July 20, 2005)

"The tertiary level enrolment to our Universities is extremely low at a mere 2% of the relevant student cohort. Many countries, including those around us in the Asian Region, have enhanced their tertiary level enrolments and prospered greatly only by bringing in the non State sector into tertiary education.

Fortunately both major political parties in Sri Lanka have accepted that permitting the establishment of new Universities and Higher Educational Institutions outside the State sector represents an obvious solution. Unfortunately, they have not had the courage, the will or the determination to resist forces that are blindly opposed to this broad basin of the provision of tertiary education in Sri Lanka.

"It is high time that all Sri Lankans took up a more pragmatic view and give up the dogmatic feeling that whatever is provided by the State is automatically more just, equitable and fair. There is abundant evidence that in many cases, State provision in numerous fields has been largely geared towards the interests of politicians.

I am convinced that in the sphere of education it is high time that we accept reality and give up dogmatic theories that whatever is supplied by the private sector should be rejected since it is more unjust and profit motivated as compared to the State sector. It has also been assumed that the provision of free education up to the University had achieved social equity.

However, it is worthwhile to pause and contemplate whether on the one hand there were no other priorities and on the other hand whether free education particularly at the tertiary level should have been implemented in a different manner so that we could have achieved a far greater return and output than we have achieved so far.

"If some of the State's limited resources had been alternatively used to provide the much needed physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges and power plants which provide a high rate of economic growth, more jobs would have been created to accommodate the unemployed graduates. A lopsided system of priorities have instead led Sri Lanka to economic stagnation.

You are aware how the government has been very inefficiently and unsatisfactorily trying to solve the problem of graduate unemployment over the past year in a most unprofessional though political manner. The availability of free education, as in Sri Lanka, could be counter productive if those who really cannot benefit from it proceed to obtain university education because it is free and there are no other viable productive opportunities available for them subsequently in a stagnant economy.

"The World Bank has repeatedly pointed out that while the spread of primary education to the poor makes it re-distributive, public expenditure on higher education tends to redistribute the income of the poor to the rich since in most cases, poor parents and their children have little opportunity to benefit from it. Since there is nothing really called a free Lunch, somebody somewhere has to pay for free tertiary education.

In our march towards a knowledgeable society, we must be careful to ensure that only the right person, whether rich or poor, gets the right education at the right time and at the right cost.

Only the needy should be provided the necessary subsidy to pursue tertiary education.

Those who can afford to pay must be required to pay.

Expanding free University education blindly especially by creating half starved and half baked mushroom Universities with no consideration for quality or productivity in order to cater to political and sectarian interests does not give the appropriate incentive to those not academically inclined to move towards vocational education at an early age thereby providing the much needed middle level personnel, who are often in short supply.

"It is very distressing to note that a few international schools have been permitted to be established outside the Educational Act and provide English medium education to an exclusively small but rich minority outside the conventional system. There is no external quality control whatsoever.

Schools were taken over in 1961 to establish a so called national system of education for you and me; however politicians who were at the forefront of that change including those at the highest in the land had the audacity to permit for themselves such an alternate system of very expensive and exclusive education that is not available to most of us.

What hypocrisy and pursuance of double standards?

We also have higher educational institutions affiliated to foreign Universities which are also providing very high cost tertiary education to a few Sri Lankans.

To be Continued

www.ceylincoproperties.com

| News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security |
| Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries | Junior Observer |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager