Shamala Kumar
PART II
This two-part Kuppi Talk addresses the seeming the lack of a systematically formulated policy for free university education.
Policy and University Education – the 1950s
The 1950s saw the fruits of free education reach the university. The SLFP-led government formed in 1956 transformed what had been reserved for a privileged few into a right for all who qualified by declaring that all who met the eligibility requirements should be entitled to a university education.
The transformation was significant. Uswatte-Aratchi’s (1974) shows that while the student body in 1950 was almost exclusively from English-speaking backgrounds, a third of the 1968 cohort were from families in which no one was literate in English. Enrolments rose from 2,036 in 1950 to over 14,000 in 1965 (Kalugalagedara & Kaushalya, 2017). Furthermore, by the late 1960s, Sri Lanka had one of the highest of rates of women enrolled in university. Sadly, with the change of instruction to Sinhala and Tamil, the higher rates of admission of Tamil compared to Sinhala medium candidates caused hateful rhetoric and tensions. It resulted in the infamous and poorly conceived adoption of lower cut-offs for Sinhala than Tamil medium students in 1971 and later medium-wise standardisation (De Silva, 1974).
Within this context, none of the acts specific to university education since 1942 quite addressed the profound shifts taking place in education. To illustrate, the 1966 Act was reactive, formulated largely to address the immediate matter of large cohorts of eligible students entering through free school education; the 1972 Act was created as an attempt by government to “rationalize” the system (make it more efficient and effective); and the Act of 1978, which introduced the University Grants Commission, was created without public consultation. All policy changes after 1978 were either through amendments to the 1978 Act or circulars based on it.
Higher education policy post-1978
The UNP’s landslide victory in 1977 ushered in economic liberalisation, creating the conditions for structural adjustment and opening Sri Lanka’s university system to international development finance. By the late 1980s, the World Bank (WB), under the “Washington Consensus”, was advancing a global project to reshape education through development lending. Although presenting itself as technical and apolitical, WB’s influence was and has been profoundly political; it has reshaped universities while operating largely outside democratic political processes and public scrutiny. This helps explain how major reforms have entered the university system without corresponding changes in national policy.
There is a striking consistency between WB policy documents and the policies of countries it funds. That consistency is especially troubling in Sri Lanka, where free education, built on state financing and public provision, is fundamentally at odds with the Bank’s neoliberal vision. A 2001 WB document explicitly states that its aim is to create conditions for private sector participation that would “end the government monopoly” on university education in Sri Lanka. Studying WB grants and loans, the thrust of their agenda is clear: marketisation of university education by creating avenues for private capital to enter, redefining university autonomy as financial independence from the state, promoting corporatised governance, commercialising university outputs, encouraging public-private partnerships, recognising private education providers, and expanding the state’s regulatory function.
The WB’s policy agenda has shaped the way university education is conceived. They have reframed higher education narrowly as a tool for building resources (knowledge capital) to better link the country to the global economy, through jobs, commercially useful research and the marketing of degrees. As an illustrative example, I would like to focus on university ranking. It is a means through which higher education institutes are assessed on a common metric and thereby connected to local and global higher education markets. Even though ranking systems are highly problematic conceptually and technically (Belenkuyu & Karadag, 2023), they are powerful. When striving for higher rankings, universities must fulfil ranking criteria rather than ask what the country needs from its universities. Consider the much-touted Webometrics ranking, which is primarily based on a university’s virtual presence. Universities seeking to improve their rankings have implemented mechanisms to increase online visibility, including by coercing staff to enhance their online profile. Yet one must ask whether this should be a priority for a university designed to serve a country with poor connectivity, limited technological capacity and resource constraints. Many such examples exist of how processes and outcomes promoted by the WB have had significant policy implications, especially because of the vacuum created by the absence of proper policy formulation processed for university education in the country.
Access and other consequences
State education is a form of wealth redistribution. When the state underfunds education and allied services, students must rely on private resources to compensate, and only wealthy families can carry these burdens. Years of anti-state rhetoric reinforced by interventions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and WB have eroded public funding for education and shifted costs onto students and families.
Sri Lanka’s education system is increasingly tiered; one tier for the rich and another for the poor. While university education remains officially free, admission depends on whether families have access to “good” schools and private tuition. Herath (2022) found finances to be a primary determinant of achievement and anecdotal evidence indicates that highly sought-after programmes appear to enrol a disproportionately affluent student body. The rapidly growing fee-levying higher education sector remains inaccessible for many. The classed education system of the colonial era (see Sessional Paper XXIV, 1943) thus persists — the very system that free education was intended to abolish.
The lack of budgetary allocations from the government has made universities especially vulnerable. As one administrator, responding to a question about having been compelled to cave into external pressures stated, “Beggars [meaning state universities] cannot be choosers.” Such responses may seem a cop-out, but it came when universities were scrambling to purchase paper for examinations. Financially starved institutions are compelled to compete for WB funds and make decisions that are inconsistent with our mandate. They must increasingly also respond to private capital, the corporate sector and students who can afford to pay, as they become dependent on these sources for survival.
A policy making body?
The National Education Commission (NEC, Act #19, 1991) has the mandate to formulate policy for university education. The NEC is composed of the chairpersons of the University Grant Commission, the Technical and Vocational Education Commission, and government nominees; the former should ensure subsequent implementation of policies and the latter would presumably represent the government’s policy agendas. The Act that establishes the NEC is strong.
Then why have successive governments, throughout the NEC’s existence, constituted ad hoc bodies of legislators and others to formulate policy — at times seemingly independent of the NEC? A possibility is that the NEC lacks adequate in-house capacity, technical and theoretical depth, to formulate policy considering the needs of both the sector and the nation, and anticipating local and global challenges. The NEC’s independence from the Ministry of Education seems to have resulted in a form of distance that makes policy and implementation too removed from each other to be effective. Finally, its limited role, restricted to providing policy recommendations to the President who may accept or reject them may be too narrow to be effective. One must ask whether the NEC’s mandate should be strengthened?
The 1966 Act created the short-lived National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), which was tasked with planning, coordination, and overseeing higher educational institutes. While the NCHE had broader powers beyond policy recommendations, its role was seen as infringing on university powers. It was therefore a failure. While the country seems to require a more effective policy arm both the NEC and the NCHE seem to fall short.
Any policy formulation process must be amply financed by the state if we are to build an education system that suits us. Funds must be unconstrained by the agendas of external institutions.
As the present government commits to reforming higher education, I ask that attention be placed on establishing mechanisms to progressively change and reform higher education in a healthy, systematic, transparent, and democratic manner. In the future, we must not be left with an education system that is ill-prepared and ill-suited to our context, or one that lacks the strength to withstand attacks by insidious and anti-democratic forces.
