SA students meet in Colombo

The fourth South Asian Economics Students Meet is scheduled to be held from February 23-24 at Galle Face Hotel, followed by a retreat of the foreign participants. This will be attended by about 200 undergraduate students reading for Bachelors Degrees in Economics in South Asian countries.

The Meet is organised by the special degree students and the staff of the Department of Economics of the University of Colombo in collaboration with the World Bank. A number of public sector institutes as well as sponsors from the corporate sector in Sri Lanka will contribute to the event. In addition, the students and the university have also made contributions.

Dr. Sirimal Abeyratne, Country Coordinator - South Asian Economics Students Meet, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Colombo highlights opportunities that would come to South Asian undergraduates.

'What is this 'Economics Students' Meet?

This is basically an 'annual meeting of undergraduate students in the region'. The Meet comprises a few elements of which one of the most important is the 'conference of undergraduates'. In addition, it also includes an economics quiz contest, certificate awards ceremony, a retreat, an academic publication of the research papers of undergraduates.

For the conference, we provide economic themes on the basis of current economic issues common to South Asian countries and are related to economic cooperation and development in the region. Undergraduate students write research papers on the issues relevant to their own countries under the themes given and make the presentations and the conference. This is in fact a 'novel initiative' and, perhaps the first event of this type in Sri Lankan University system.

The beginning and the history of this novel initiative?

Even the concept is only about four years old and it was born in Delhi University. I was invited by one of my colleagues there to collaborate in this project and organise the Sri Lankan university representation. Then the Departments of Economics of five leading universities in South Asia coordinated the annual event, hosted by one of these Universities each year. The Delhi University organised the inaugural Meet in 2004 in Delhi, followed by the second in Lahore in 2005 and the third in Dhaka in 2006. Now it is our turn. At the annual meeting of Country Coordinators representing the University of Delhi, University of Dhaka, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu and the University of Colombo we decide on the annual programme and announce at the end of the Meet.

Significance for the South Asian Economic Students' meet to undergraduates?

The Meet is for the students and organised by the students. It is a valuable opportunity for capacity building of university undergraduates to write on relevant development issues in the region at international level and then to make a presentation at an international conference, which we never had during our time. This is also a wonderful opportunity for our students to expose them to the outside world and think beyond the set situations within their classrooms and universities. They meet their co-fellows from other countries and exchange views, learning from each other. They learn not only about the development issues, but also about themselves and their undergraduate studies as well.

This meet will be represented by undergraduates from public and private universities in the region - for instance, the Lahore University of Management Sciences which is our coordinating university in Pakistan and North-South University in Bangladesh - both are private universities.

Therefore, you will see how competitive they are among the universities represented in this Meet. I think in this respect, Sri Lanka is lagging far behind although we used to boast about our educational standards and literacy rates.

Contribution made by the previous meets and achievements? So far we had only three events previously in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and in all these events 32 Sri Lankan undergraduates participated. I am proud to say that many of our participants made excellent presentations and they were no less than their counterparts from other South Asian universities.

Some of them even won the prizes for the "best presentations". But there is a serious problem because the majority of our undergraduates are not up to the comparable standards. Our participants have clearly pointed out in their reports (which were published in the electronic media and the press) that need for improving international competitiveness in higher education.

Lessons highlighted in the reports?

Some of the major points that they have highlighted in their reports were the problems of age gap, language gap and, private-public partnership in higher education. In terms of the age gap, our students are about four years older than their counterparts because students of even our neighbouring South Asian countries enter the universities at 18 years of age, while our students at 22 years. Secondly, these students follow their higher studies in English because whatever the pro-nationalist movement in these countries, they did not change their English medium of instruction in the university system.

The advantage is that the learning process of these students is much wider than ours as they refer to global material, while our students have to limit it to their classroom lecture notes. Thirdly, they have also highlighted from their own experience the contribution of the private sector to higher education, which has created a public-private partnership in improving the quality of both sectors.

We sometimes think that we are superior to our neighbouring countries in many ways including education. But this is a myth. Our standards are greater in terms of distribution, but not in quality. Our literacy rate is over 90 per cent. But this makes little sense in this globalising world, when India's 0.2% is larger than Sri Lanka's entire population?

World Bank, collaborating on student affairs?

Perhaps, many have taken this as a surprise, because historically there has been a wide gap between the World Bank and the University students.

The World Bank's involvement in education has been there, but it was at institutional level. The differences are due to lack of dialogue between the two parties. I wish if there is a continuation of this partnership between the University students and the World Bank with an effective dialogue, because the World Bank in many different ways can assist in upgrading our higher education among other things.

Long-term benefits that would come along with the summit?

The South Asian Economic Students' Meet has already become the prime regional body of budding economists in the region. These young economists will be the future policy makers, administrators and entrepreneurs who will manage our regional integration and development. Although, we are neighbours in the region, all these countries are strongly tied with the West than with each other in the region in terms of economic relations.

These young economists will strengthen their bond that they build and pave the ways and means of integration by identifying the mutual benefits all countries can derive. Therefore, this is small but a strong element of our regional integration.