The KNDU Bill is designed to single-handedly change the face of education in Sri Lanka. Since the ‘90s, successive governments have tried to roll back the gains of the Free Education Poliicy of 1945. The history of free education is not linear, nor is it without contradictions.
‘Critical thinking’ is a term that has become ubiquitous in both general and higher education discourse. One sees this phrase appear frequently in educational policy statements. Many who speak of education reform see it as a key skill that education needs to foster.
The curriculum taught at a university shapes the way its students perceive education and its roles and purposes, as well as the academic discipline(s) they study. It occupies the heart of the educational apparatuses by which ideologies (of dominance) are naturalised and socialised.
By Nicola Perera The Arts Faculty admits and graduates the largest number of students every year. The private sector tells us that most are unemployable because they lack English skills. The university’s apparent failure to instill English skills in its students is then taken as reinforcing a stereotype that already exists—the irrelevance of the Arts …
When we talk about violence within our universities, the conversation invariably turns to ragging. Some of us also talk about other forms of violence, such as the arbitrary sacking of a vice chancellor or an academic who does not toe the line.
Recent socio-political debates in Sri Lanka on higher education suggest that universities are being viewed as neo-liberal institutions set up to produce human capital for the market. State imperatives to produce employable graduates with the desired mix of knowledge, skills, and competencies to serve the (global) economy have translated to a growing marginalisation of the arts in favour of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programmes at universities.
With more interest in the quality of higher education in Sri Lanka than ever before, and with a pandemic forcing far-reaching changes, this is an opportune time to discuss what quality means for university education.
‘Arts people’, since quite some time now, are being pushed to confront this question head-on. Since answers are only as good as the questions that prompt them, my aim here is to first unpack this question, then its proposed solution.
A recent report on higher education published by the National Audit Office (2020) attempted to make a connection between graduate unemployment and Arts education. Today’s Kuppi Talk is derived from a response that we, a group of university academics formulated to the report.
We have seen more blood than this small island can soak. The country has seen decades-long war and two youth insurrections (1971, 1988-89) with thousands of young lives lost. In the ‘post-war’ era, violence continues unabated in the attacks on Muslims and Christians, the Easter bombings, and countless horrifying incidents
