Improve quality in undergraduate education

A brief discussion of the historical evolution of the University, particularly in respect of developments within the Faculties of Arts and Humanities, is necessary to examine the problems of the Arts graduates who have become pawns in the hands of some politicians and the magnitude of the problem, many facets of which have resulted in the creation of several problems relating to both social and political stability. It is in this light that all aspects pertaining to undergraduate education in the universities need to be analysed as its quality impinges on all processes of development in the country.

The over emphasis on undergraduate education, specially in such areas as Arts embracing both Social Sciences and Humanities, was entirely due to two important factors; one, for instance, focused on the need to convert the University into a centre of cultural renaissance, and those members of the educated elite, through the famous ‘University movement’ advocated the establishment of a University ‘adapted to local needs’.

The English educated professional men, who were members of the Ceylon University Association, demanded that knowledge imparted by a new University should be ‘relevant and adequate’. Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, who gave vocal expression to these ideals, stated that ‘the creation of a University meant national existence, and without sitting idly to arrest the process of de-nationalisation, the Ceylonese will have to make up, as they owed a duty to themselves and to posterity’.

This statement, in fact, showed that the nationalists of the period always thought in terms of a University capable of contributing to a renewal of indigenous Sinhalese culture. In other words, they wanted a University which can embody the traditional Sinhalese culture. Yet another view, as expounded by Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, was that ‘the projected University should dedicate itself to the development of Oriental Languages. Therefore, the University, after the acrimonious ‘ battle of the sites’, was to be conceived as an institution which would revitalise and promote indigenous culture, and this position came to be adopted as a reaction to the role of the University College (1921) which, in the twenty years of its existence, functioned more in the nature of an institution promoting Western culture.

Academic Year	  	Total 
1999-2000
G.C.E. A/L 1998		3,647
2000-2001
G.C.E. A/L 1999		3,539
2001-2002
G.C.E. A/L 2000		3,794
2002-2003
G.C.E. A/L 2002		3,880
2004-2005
G.C.E. A/L 2004		4,113
2005-2006
G.C.E. A/L 2005		4,502
2006-2007
G.C.E. A/L 2006		4,987
2007-2008
G.C.E. A/L 2007		5,030

Its curricula-oriented towards London University examinations, resulted in the retardation of the indigenous languages and culture. Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, being a powerful and articulate member of the then intellectual elite of the period, advocated a University that is capable of bringing about a fusion of both Western culture and Oriental culture. It was the view of Arunachalam that care needs to be taken to see that the youth of the country do not grow up as strangers to their past history, mother tongue and traditions.

This was one aspect of the background in which Social Sciences and Humanities were encouraged in the initial phase of University education in Sri Lanka. Yet another significant reason was the character of the colonial university which, again, in the initial phase, was expected to produce personnel for administrative and commercial establishments. The metropolitan country wanted to create an administrative elite loyal to the colonial regime and the Colonial University was asked to produce men who could man the administrative services with both devotion and efficiency.

The purpose in adverting your attention to the above historical reasons was largely to emphasise the fact that a number of historical factors influenced the establishment of Arts Faculties in the initial phase, and the country, undoubtedly, benefited from it as the early intellectual enterprise of the country came to be built around an exclusive galaxy of intellectuals in the field of Oriental Languages and Culture. In 1942 the University of Ceylon was built around four major faculties - Arts, Oriental Languages, Science and Medicine, and it was the first two faculties - Arts and Oriental Studies which, through their products and scholars, began to dominate the intellectual and cultural life of the country in the subsequent three decades.

These four Faculties had 17 Departments, and the Departments relevant to our discussion included such Departments as Indo-Aryan, Tamil, English, Western Classics, History, Geography, Economics and Philosophy. In 1943 three separate Departments were created out of Indo-Aryan-Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit. A Department of Arabic was created in 1945 and the Faculty of Oriental Studies was expanded to include courses in Buddhist Philosophy and Buddhist Civilisation.

Sociology, which functioned as a unit in the Department of Economics, was made a separate Department in 1949. A separate Department of Education was established in 1949; a Department of Archaeology too came into existence in the same year. It was in this form that both the Social Sciences and Humanities began to dominate the intellectual life of the universities and this kind of expansion came to be emulated by the new universities as well.

The two universities - Jayewardenepura and Kelaniya, came to be founded on two ancient seats of learning, and the relevant historical antecedents had a tremendous impact on their evolution, and they, as expected, began to emulate the experience of the University of Ceylon in establishing Departments of Study in both Social Sciences and Humanities. Historical tradition of the two institutions influenced them to go in the same direction. These two Universities, due to the nature of their involvement with Oriental Languages and Culture, made use of this strong foundation and began to establish Departments specializing in Oriental Languages and Culture. It is in this context that the Arts Faculties began to expand, and the large majority of students came to the University to study Social Sciences and Humanities.

Year Number   Number             
            	sat	     admitted 

1953		1065		248
1954		 996		294
1955		1072		284
1956		1110		344
1957		1187		380

This was primarily due to the paucity of facilities in the rural areas in the science field, and most of the students were compelled to offer subjects in the Arts stream. Needham Commission (1959), taking into consideration the criticisms of the nationalist opinion in the country, argued for further extension of facilities for the study of Arts and Humanities. The Needham Commission, arguing in support of the extension of Arts courses, stated that ‘it is also the duty of a university to be the repository of the larger cultural heritage of all mankind and to transmit the spirit of that culture to succeeding generations’.

The impact of the political change of 1956 perhaps influenced the Commission to make this kind of comment, and its recommendations had an impact on the expansion of the Arts courses in the Universities. It was in the seventies that an attempt was made by the Osmund Jayaratne Committee on Higher Education to recommend a scheme of rationalisation, the aim of which was to rationalise the existing courses of study in the Arts and Humanities with a view to creating centres of excellence in respective subjects. This scheme of rationalisation was viewed as a Marxist conspiracy, and it created lot of resentment among the academic community.

The Osmund Jayaratne Committee, stating that what the country needed now were not Government officials but economists, scientists and technicians, emphasized that ‘the liberal arts tradition was continued and fostered in our schools, and only in recent times was any serious effort made to change the emphasis towards the scientific and technical field’. With free education the schools system expanded fast but the old traditions remained. In the absence of proper facilities for science education, our schools continued to produce an ever-increasing number of students trained in the arts and humanities’. The emphasis on liberal arts degrees in the universities, a tradition which the country inherited from colonial times, resulted in a situation highly weighted in favour of the production of Arts graduates, and the number of undergraduates, in all four universities in 1970, following Arts-oriented courses as a percentage of the total undergraduate population was as follows:

It was on the basis of such statistics that the view was expressed that there was an imbalance between the pattern of courses provided and the priorities of national development.

The increase in student enrolment for Arts-based courses for all Universities was nearly twenty-fold, and the intake in 1942 was 396, which, by 1979, reached up to 6952. Management studies, which became a separate discipline in 1972 - now there are Management Departments in all Universities-enroled only 921 students. By 1979, it almost doubled to 1806, for all Universities. In the annual intake, the Arts intake remained high, and this, again, was due to the continued emphasis on the courses in the Faculties of Arts in the Universities. In 2006, out of a student community of 60,350, 19,795 came within the category of Arts; another 11,093 and 3617 fell within the category of Management and Commerce respectively. It would be useful to quote the relevant statistics relating to the annual intake of Arts students in the last ten years.

In the fifties, the Arts intake was as follows:

Now it would appear that the heaviest pressure was on the Faculty of Arts, and the demand for university education on the Arts stream presented a number of difficulties. The demand for University education in Arts remained high because of the fact the external examinations of the University of London were not open to Sri Lankan students. It was known that more than half the undergraduate population was in these subject areas, and it was this trend which called for a number of reforms with a view to enhancing both quality and relevance. In the past several decades, specially after the youth revolt of 1971, there was this criticism that the universities have failed to produce graduates who could effectively contribute to economic and social development of the country.

Academic     Percentage 
Year                           
1966-1967	77%
1967-1968	76%
1968-1969	73%
1969-1970	70%

Major criticism was that the universities, especially those programs of study in the Arts faculties, have failed to produce an employable graduate, and such criticisms were made primarily in the context of the deteriorating quality of the undergraduate. There was a visible decline in the quality of the graduates who came via this mill at the universities, and several reasons could be attributed to this decline in quality. What was required to arrest this trend was a realistic package of policies to restore an intellectual culture through which both quality and relevance could be enhanced.

The Government of Sri Lanka, with the generous assistance from the World Bank, launched the program to improve Relevance and Quality of Undergraduate Education (IRQUE) for which a Policy Planning and Development Unit was set up in the Ministry of Higher Education. The value of this project was 51.0 million Us Dollars. This was to enhance the quality and relevance of undergraduate education programs which, from the inception of university education, dominated the academic life of the universities in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, the majority of the university programs conducted in the seventeen universities cater to undergraduates who, though produced in large numbers, do not possess the required skills for the labour market.

This came to be linked to the question of unemployment and under-employment of graduates; for instance, in 1968 there were 10,000 unemployed graduates and the great majority of the unemployed were those who had an Arts degree. In 1990, the number graduated stood at 25,000, out of which 11,707-almost 47 percent-remained unemployed, and the reason was that they could not find employment appropriate to their educational achievements.

No much change was made to link the courses of study to the demands of the labour market, and the over-reliance on the traditional disciplines created a fresh set of problems. Major problem was the lack of quality and relevance of the existing degree programs in the universities and this project, with the funding from the World Bank, is expected to address this issue of enhancing the quality and relevance; the IRQUE Project has focused on certain initiatives to improve undergraduate education with a view to arresting the decline in the standards of undergraduate education; the most significant need is to restore a learning culture in the universities and it is with this that the quality could be enhanced. In my view, quality of the undergraduate has declined primarily as a result of the absence of a learning culture or an intellectual environment in the universities, and this is integrally associated with the failure of the universities to work according to the University Calendar. This, again, is linked to political activism of a segment of the student community, some of whom are bent on destructive violent behaviour.

The IRQUE project, proposes to enhance the quality of undergraduate education on the basis of capacity building, quality assurance and accreditation, higher education management systems, performance targets, Quality Enhancement Fund, and Skills Development programs involving IT and English. It is hoped that through a series of initiatives related to such key aspects that an employable graduate could be produced through the network of Sri Lankan Universities. Innovations and changes focusing on the needs to enhance the quality and relevance of undergraduate education are certain to make an impact on the Universities engaged in undergraduate education, and they are sure to focus their attention on the need to respond to economic and social situations of a given country.

In my view, equal emphasis is necessary to improve the post-graduate sector which, if properly organised, is certain to make a major impact on the undergraduate learning culture. It is on the basis of this relationship that quality and relevance could be enhanced in undergraduate education. Therefore, Arts Faculties of universities, which, in the initial phase of University education, played a significant role in the intellectual life of the country, need to be infused with new ideas so that their undergraduate education could be made relevant to the immediate developments. The IRQUE Project, though it bases its improvement program on both performance and needs, should give equal weightage to matters that lead to student unrest in the universities, and this, as I always emphasise, is integral to the decline in quality.

Yet another important issue is the nature of the Administrative staff, whose input is equally important, and recruitment policies in respect of this segment needs immediate revision as the universities need competent teachers as well as competent and committed administrators who too could assist in the enhancement of the quality of undergraduate education. In other words, I do not want the policy-makers to treat student unrest and their militant political activism as an extraneous factors; it is a factor integrally linked to certain basic issues in the University.

One is likely to say that the welfare issues matter here. It is not only through the enhancement of the quality of undergraduate education that the graduates of the Arts Faculties could be fruitfully used for development in the country. The learning environment, in which both teaching and research are required to play a fundamental role, needs to be restored in order to convert the universities into effective and useful centres of learning.

In conclusion, one can say that this project, through which funds are to be provided to the Arts Faculties in the universities to make the necessary adjustments to make them useful players in the development process in the country, is certain to elevate the status of the Faculties of Arts as active partners in the intellectual life of the country.

A speech delivered by Prof. Wiswa Warnapala, Minister of Higher Education at a special seminar on Improving Relevance and Quality of Undergraduate Education (IRQUE) organised by the World Bank at the BMICH on September 5.