Non-university tertiary institutions need expansion

To provide additional access to higher education:

A text of a speech delivered by Prof. Wiswa Warnapala, Minister of Higher Education at Business Management Conference organized by the Society of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka at the Taj Samudra Hotel, Colombo.

I am very happy to be here today at the inauguration of the Business Management Conference which has been organized by the Society of Management Accountants of Sri Lanka.

This is a professional organization engaged in the education and training of Management Accountants for industry, commerce and the financial sector, and it has undertaken the important task of training Management Accountants. This programme is supported by the Canadian International Development Agency.

The CMA qualification provides opportunities for University graduates to obtain a professional Management Accountancy qualification which will help them to enhance their job opportunities.

This special Conference on International Business Management, which has been organized with international participation, is to discuss the essential issues relevant to the world of business.

I propose to make use of this opportunity to examine some issues relating to the need to develop professional education in Sri Lanka. The development of professions in the 19th century was based on the concept of equality of opportunity and the important professions, which surfaced during the Victorian period in the United Kingdom, were based on both initiative and enterprise.

It was through professions that certain individuals rose to positions of wealth and power. With the development of modern professions, the talented have been given the opportunity to go up the ladder, and the rate of social progress, in many a country, depended upon the degree to which power is matched with intelligence.

Merit became the criterion in society and the clever children of each generation made use of the opportunity for ascent to a position of influence.

In this way, all professions became very influential institutions in modern society and it was they who, in the form of a powerful vanguard of change and transformation, provided the required leadership to all modern nations in their hour of change.

In Sri Lanka, the early professional education came to be introduced with the establishment of the Ceylon Medical College in 1870 and the Law College in 1874; they were the two oldest professional institutions of this country, and they, through the production of Doctors and Lawyers, paved the way for the creation of a small professional elite in the county.

The colonial policy of the period was to create opportunities for a small minority to obtain professional qualifications in medicine and law; they were to remain as an influential segment in the colonial society and they were created on the basis of a conscious policy of the Government.

The over-emphasis on Medicine and Law resulted in the neglect of other professions; for instance, Technical education suffered because of this emphasis on two important professions, and it was in the thirties of the 20th century that an attempt was made to develop an engineering profession in the country.

Though business houses and commercial enterprises came to be developed in association with the development of plantations in the country, no powerful business elite came on the scene till the sixties.

It was in 1962 that the need to teach commerce as a subject at the university was recognised, and the universities, thereafter, began to introduce courses in commerce and accountancy.

Accountancy was taught as a part of the course in economics. Today Accountancy, with its different specializations, has developed as a profession, which, in the last five decades, has made a major impact on the management of business and commercial enterprises. The expansion of the State Corporate sector too provided an impetus to its expansion.

However, no much of an effort has been made by the Government, through a package of higher educational policies, to expand professional education in such spheres as Accountancy; it was the private sector organizations which made a pioneering role in respect of this matter.

Though the major professions still dominate the system of professional education, no conscious attempts have made to diversify the system of Higher Education with a view to attracting the University graduate to both industry and commerce.

Globalised world

All the universities in the country have degree programmes in commerce and management, and there are courses in business studies and communication.

The establishment of these courses in management and commerce have attracted a substantial number of students; they, instead of going into traditional disciplines, now prefer to study these subjects as they offer better employment opportunities.

Higher Education has been regarded as an important element in economic and social development of a country, and all higher educational institutions, especially the Universities, need to produce graduates with advanced knowledge and skills required for positions in Government, business and industry.

The current view is that the emerging knowledge economy demands the creation of new disciplines which have an immediate relevance to the changes that are taking place in a globalised world.

More and more multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary studies are encouraged; the barriers that isolated the modern University from society are being broken, and this means that relevance, both in teaching and research, has been recognised as a fundamental requirement.

The traditional academic departments are being transformed to create multi-disciplinary centres of learning, through which a productive and quality graduate could be produced.

The reforms within the Universities alone cannot attract graduates to go in the direction of business and industry. The diversification of the existing system of higher educational institutions could be achieved by expanding the non-University tertiary institutions which, in the process, would expand the access to higher educational opportunities.

In other words, the creation of more non-University institutions are certain to help meet the growing social demand for higher educational opportunities in the country, and it is through such a policy that higher education could be made more responsive to the demands of the labour market.

Yet another aspect of the same problem is the investment in higher education; since the Sri Lankan system is based on State funding, the maintenance of higher education as a State function is a major burden on the State.

In other words, the public resources available to finance higher education is limited, and because of the paucity of resources several problems have arisen within the system, making it sometimes dysfunctional. In most low income countries, the higher educational systems are funded by public resources.

Framework

Most countries have established non-University tertiary institutions with a view to providing more higher educational opportunities. Sri Lanka has nearly 72,000 students in the formal system of Universities whereas there are more than 50,000 students in the non-University tertiary sector which began to expand in the last ten years.

It is in this sector that we see the operation of private sector educational institutions. It is also in this sector that recognition has been given to professional courses of study which, to a large extent, are tied to partnerships with Universities outside the country.

This means that a new non-University tertiary sector, specializing in professional education is emerging in the country. This network of higher educational institutions do not come within a suitable legal framework; a mechanism has to be set up to ensure quality assurance of these tertiary institutions engaged in all types of professional education.

Many of these institutions offer training opportunities that can respond flexibly to the demands of the labour market; in other words, there are men and women who can find employment because of the nature of the qualification which they possess.

Yet another important feature is that these institutions have influenced the new generation to change their perception on scholastic education which came to be institutionalized from the time of colonial rule in the country.

The expansion of tertiary institutions would help the disadvantaged groups, particularly women to obtain a higher educational qualification. In Sri Lanka, this is not a special requirement as the country has achieved virtual gender equality.

In India and Bangladesh, such institutions play an important role in empowering women. In other words, the so-called ‘female’ occupations are undergoing a change as a result of the change in the perceptions in respect of such occupations, to which a modern professional content has been injected.

In other words, such ‘female’ occupations as nursing and hair dressing have been recognised as professions. Such programmes have been designed to address the needs of modern industry, and such subjects attract female applicants who now look for a professional career. Fashion industry offers such opportunities.

In developing non-University tertiary institutions with a professional content, well-thought out measure are necessary to avoid them being perceived as second-rate institutions.

In a country where there is a well developed University system, such a perception is certain to emerge, and this would result in student discontent. Some years back, Sri Lanka created a network of University Affiliated Colleges which, in the perception of the students, were second rate and what resulted was student discontent and unrest, because of which the Government was compelled to up-grade the Affiliated Colleges to provincial Universities, which are now part of the national system of University education in the country.

We are therefore determined not to create ‘dead-end’ institutions functioning as academic parking lots where higher educational opportunities are created for surplus students who, in the given context, cannot find places within the formal system.

The major challenge before us is to improve the access to the large number of students who aspire to get into the system; in other words, the issue is how to address the growing social demand. The intake to the Universities, in a way, is restricted, and the fifteen Universities can absorb only 20,000 students.

It is in this context that more and more non-University institutions need to be established to provide places for those secondary-school leavers who do not qualify for the Universities.

In developing non-University tertiary institutions to cater to the growing social demand, extreme care has to be taken to see that they, as time goes, do not get themselves transformed into scholastic-oriented academic institutions. In other words, they should not deviate from their original mission of providing alternative educational opportunities in both technical and professional subjects.

In Germany, in addition to the traditional Universities, Techniche Hochschulen “institutes specializing in engineering sciences and applied sciences” are a new type of institutions in the system of higher education.

They vary in terms of size, number of students and the number of courses of studies, and the individual Institutes have a specific regional character or a particular specialization. They are in the tertiary sector and combine both academic training with practical professional training. They are primarily employment-oriented institutions. What needs to be emphasized is the necessity for diversification.

In a system of higher education based entirely on State funding, the important question is how to allocate the available resources.

The allocation of resources needs to be transparent, rational and efficient, and the criteria adopted in the allocation of funds should not interfere with the initiative of the institution. The funding to such institutions could be based on unit costs and it relates to the admission policy.

In the Sri Lankan system, the strong role of the State in higher education has been the main feature, and its origin is in the political and economic circumstances which are part and parcel of the political culture of the country.