Kuppi Talk

The education debate in Sri Lanka today, especially as it pertains to higher education (HE) is fraught and confused. On the one hand, we have arguments that universities cannot accommodate all who apply for entrance and therefore should be expanded by the private sector. On the other hand, state universities are allegedly producing graduates who are not employable and therefore syllabuses and approaches should change. This discourse also frames Arts students as no good lay-abouts who sponge off state money and only do politics. Today, the Treasury is holding back committed funds to state universities and cutting the HE budgets. State universities are also told to absorb more students without greater investment, and generate funds by carrying out fee-levying courses.

It was an unswept corridor with poor ventilation and no fans or air-conditioning, hellish in the scorching Jaffna weather. I see students with disabilities taking exams in the corridor outside of the New Exam Hall, in the Faculty of Arts, at the University of Jaffna. For four years, I was tormented by the sight of this spatial dichotomy: The exam hall was dedicated to students without disabilities who took exams in the comfort of fans (or more seldomly, air-conditioning ) while the corridor was the (un)official exam venue for visually-impaired students to whom the invigilators read out the paper aloud during the exam due to the unavailability of Braille transcribed exam papers. These students were placed in the corridor so that other students were not disturbed during the process. There is something fundamentally wrong with this. Why cannot these students be placed in a classroom instead of a corridor? And a larger question is why these students, along with others with disabilities, are excluded from university spaces?

One of the principles of free education is to provide opportunities in higher education. In 2020, then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa issued directives to the University Grants Commission (UGC) to increase university admissions by an additional 12,000 students, in line with his election manifesto. Subsequently, student enrollments were increased with inadequate resources allocated for the enhancement of university facilities to accommodate the surge in student enrollments.

Massive changes are sweeping through the higher education sector in the midst of political and economic chaos. As Naomi Klein’s ‘Disaster Capitalism’ thesis cautions us, hasty changes pushed through during times of great uncertainty and desperation tend to have devious intentions. These times do not afford the leisure of circumstance to carefully deliberate the implications of the proposed changes. We need to grasp the urgency of the situation and respond collectively before irreversible harm is inflicted upon our system of free public education.

The Chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of Sri Lanka, Prof. Sampath Amaratunge, is widely being quoted on social media these days as having said at a COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) meeting that there are no employment opportunities for as many as 70 percent of the Arts graduates (graduates produced in the fields of the humanities and social sciences) in the country. He is also quoted as having said that the under-employment of the Arts graduates is the sole reason behind the criticism that is out there against the entire university system in the country.

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Education recently released its report on its programme for reforms in general education and higher education. Headed by Dr. Wijedasa Rajapaksa, the more than 10-member committee only had two members who had had anything to do with higher education, namely, Drs. Harini Amarasuriya and Charitha Herath. Yet it has audaciously proposed sweeping and fundamental changes in education, particularly higher education. It is noteworthy that Dr. Amarasuriya refused to be a party to the report and released her own dissenting report, outlining her fundamental differences with its findings.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the UN conference on Sustainable Development Goals at the University of Hull, in the United Kingdom. The theme of the conference was ‘Just Transition for Sustainable Development,’ and the popular discussions were spearheaded by natural science scholars who proudly presented new research—funded by private companies—on innovative technology for renewable energy.

Interest-free loans of LKR 1.1 million are to be offered for students to follow degree programmes at private higher educational institutions. An amendment to the Universities Act has been proposed to establish a Quality Assurance Council under the University Grants Commission (UGC) to maintain the quality of academic programmes offered by state and non-state higher educational institutions.

I began thinking about this article when the Kuppi Collective began studying the government’s plans to enact labour reforms. We had initiated discussions with others, including academics, to understand the situation and quickly realised the highly controversial nature of these reforms and their potentially serious repercussions. Yet, hardly any debate regarding these reforms seemed to emanate from within universities.

I caught myself the other day saying something to this effect in the classroom – “now that you know what I expect, I’d like you all to think through why you’ve chosen the answers you have”. At the time, I assumed that this was a very open invitation to students to revisit the whys and hows of their choices within the second language classroom. Upon further thought, however, I realise that even this exercise allows for freedom on the student’s part only if they agree that my framing of language competency is not to be questioned. In essence, I had already biased their answers by requiring them to be familiar with knowing what I wanted as a teacher.