As Sri Lanka tumbles further into the abyss of economic misery, pressure on state universities to focus more on quality assurance (QA) increases, supposedly to justify the ‘strain’ they are placing on the public purse. QA purportedly seeks to improve the ‘quality’ of education that state universities deliver, by ensuring certain generalised standards are met and maintained, and extensive documentation is considered evidence of such.
The current economic crisis has hit the country’s education sector severely. From pre-school children to undergraduates, students, teachers and non-academic staff attached to our educational system, have been affected in unprecedented ways.
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.
