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University reforms towards meeting
national needs Niall Ferguson, a fellow in Modern History at the Jesus College of the Oxford University in a recent article appeared in the Financial Times comments on the university education in the U.K. as follows:- '... Worst of all, like most Soviet factories, universities are largely producer-driven and they produce a great many things which no one really wants, and not enough of what is actually needed.'' This statement appears to be more applicable in Sri Lankan context. The very same sentiments have been expressed by most entrepreneurs, industrialists, bankers etc. in this country over and over again. The educationists and those responsible for the formulation of educational policies have to accept this reality. Thus, reforms in university education towards meeting national needs are an urgent necessity in Sri Lanka. Considering this urgent need a series of reforms in the university education has been proposed by the National Education Commission in its report submitted to Her Excellency the President. Subsequently, a Presidential Committee and Presidential Task Force have also made a set of recommendations with regard to the reforms necessary in university education. On the basis of these recommendations an action plan has been prepared by the University Grants Commission. A monitoring Committee has also been appointed to oversee the implementation of the proposed university reforms. This article highlights the priority issues which need to be addressed and how the reforms in the University system should be directed towards meeting national needs. The first national university-the University of Ceylon was established in 1942. Today the university system has been expanded to twelve Universities, six Postgraduate Institutes and five other Institutes. Among the large number of Faculties in our University System there are six Medical faculties, three Engineering faculties and twelve Science faculties today. The Sri Lankan University System has expanded rapidly over the years with the main intention of increasing the intake. Unfortunately, this expansion has taken place without proper planning and hardly paying any attention to the human resource needs of the country. As a result there is a conspicuous mismatch between the demand and the supply of graduates in the country. There has been a long-felt need to introduce reforms to re-orientate our university education to meet the present-day demand and the challenges of the future. Most important aspect of all the proposed reforms is the re-structuring of degree programmes and the overhaul of curricula to satisfy the needs of the country. The real impact of the reforms will be felt only if this aspect is adequately dealt with and the reforms in degree programmes and curricula are properly implemented. It must be emphasized that the reforms in all other aspects of the university system will be meaningless if the universities intend to continue the same stereotype courses and degree programmes. Academic reforms 1. Lack of sufficient flexibility with regard to choice of courses/subjects. 2. Lack of a general education component outside the major disciplines and the need to broadbase the degree programmes. 3. Lack of sufficient number of new subject/courses relevant to the needs of the country 4. Lack of sufficient independent studies, project work, industrial training or short internships 5. Need to update, revise and reorganize course contents 6. Need to introduce novel and modern teaching/training methodology. As a result of these deficiencies, criticisms have been levelled against the structure of degree programmes, curricula, methods of teaching and assessment at the university level. Most employers both in the state private sectors, complain that the local graduates have little general knowledge and have no capacity and background to adapt to various employment situations. It is absolutely necessary that the reforms proposed should address this issue as an utmost priority. It is necessary that a general education component should be incorporated into all the degree programmes. In addition to the subject knowledge graduates should possess general education and other qualities and abilities expected of a university graduate. The general education component should incorporate training in developing initiatives, analytical thinking, communication skills, team work with Management skills, awareness of national issues etc. Except perhaps in highly specialized professional courses broadbasing of the degree programmes with maximum flexibility could be achieved. The flexibility of degree programme should be increased to enable the students to select appropriate combination of disciplines or course units suited to their requirements. This could be achieved by having a course unit and credit system. Each degree programme should have a core and a wide variety of options to suit the requirements of the students. The general education component referred to earlier should be included in the core. In professional degree programmes, however, the core may be heavy, yet flexibility could be achieved by introducing many options in senior years. On the other hand, much greater flexibility with extensive diversification of degree programmes can be achieved in faculties of Science, Agriculture, Management, Commerce, Arts/Humanities and Social Sciences. Broadbasing of the degree programmes should be achieved by the inclusion of subject areas most useful in any type of employment, for eg. Management, Basic Computing, Legal Studies, Sri Lankan Studies, Mathematics and English Language. It must be stressed that if further specific training is required this may be obtained at the postgraduate level. Multiple entry points to the University system should be established. There should be provision for students who perform well at Technical Institutes and other tertiary level training institutions to have access to university education through this scheme. Such provision will encourage students to follow alternative paths of tertiary education. In addition mobility of students among different universities should also be encouraged subject to a screening process. Maximising use of resources In this exercise it is necessary to keep in mind the need to produce employable graduates while at the same time maintaining the quality of university education. What is urgently required at the present time is novel and innovative approaches in the formulation of degree programmes to satisfy human resource needs of the nation. Diversification of courses and degree programmes depending on the needs of the country should be given utmost priority. Immediate action should be taken to formulate interdisciplinary courses. Inter-departmental, inter-faculty and even inter-university cooperation should be encouraged to promote development of interdisciplinary courses of national importance. Even the professional faculties should give serious thought of moving away from offering only stereotype degree programmes. Medical faculties may offer B. Med.Sc. Degrees in para clinical subjects such as Pharmacy, Pharmacology, Parasitology, Radiography, Nuclear Medicine and Nursing. Similarly, Engineering and Science faculties may offer B. Tech. degrees in various technologies such as Mining, Surveying, Materials, Automobiles, Marine Science etc. Interfaculty courses such as Chemical Technology, Laboratory Management, Electronics and Instrumentation, Science and Technology Management, Climatology, Quality Management, Information Technology, Materials Science, Biological Chemistry, Environmental Science and Technology, Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology, Food Science and Technology etc. may be developed either at undergraduate or postgraduate levels. Such courses and degree programmes may be developed in the existing universities with minimum additional cost making use of available resources. It must be stressed that such diversification of courses with the maximum use of available resources would lead to more opportunities for university education. It is clear that with such adjustments in the existing university system it is possible to increase the intake substantially at a cost much lower than the cost of establishing new universities. Past experience shows that the opening up of new campuses and universities without adequate resources, facilities and trained staff would lead to disastrous consequences. In expanding and developing existing universities, the uniqueness and strengths of each institution must be recognized and adequate resources should be allocated to maintain and further develop these aspects leading to building-up of Centres of Excellence as a long term strategy in the university system. (Contd. tomorrow) A quasi-judicial body of yesteryears A newspaper reported recently (Weekend Express of August 15th/16th) that when the lawyers for the chairman of the Bribery Commission and his brother commissioner objected to the presence of Dr. G. L. Peiris and Mr. Jeyeraj Fernando-pulle at the meeting of the Parliamentary Select Committee appointed to inquire into charges against Mr. T. A. de S. Wijesundara and Mr. Rudra Rajasingham, the Chairman had ruled that those two members had the right to decide whether they should be present. The newspaper report also stated that when the lawyers appealed to the two members to refrain from attending the session, they declined. The PSC As I have personal knowledge of what took place, because the public servant concerned happened to be myself, I think it desirable, in the public interest, to reveal the manner in which the PSC of those days dealt with the inquiry. I was on home leave at the time, after a continuous period of duty both abroad and in Colombo (the then prime minister had specially approved the leave) when he sent for me one day and asked (he specifically mentioned that his was a request and not an order) me whether I would agree to curtail my leave and proceed on transfer immediately to a country where a personal friend of his was high commissioner who had himself asked for my services as his No. 2. I readily agreed. Within a matter of days, I got ready to leave with my family and one evening when I returned home after loading my baggage on board the Canberra, I think, I found a number of police officers surrounding my house. They were extremely polite and some of them were acutely embarrassed because they had worked very closely with me when I was in charge of anti-illicit immigration work in the Foreign Ministry. They told me they had been directed by the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs to search my house and look for some files which were missing from the Ministry. Neither the Prime Minister nor the PSC had been even consulted before the raid was authorised. I told the police that they were welcome to look anywhere they wished, but also informed them that their search would be incomplete unless they also searched the baggage which I had loaded on to the ship a little while before. This they did the next morning, having unloaded all my baggage but drew a blank! After the search of my house, the police with much embarrassment, took me under escort, to the notorious 4th floor of the CID where I was interrogated till after midnight and then released. It transpired at the subsequent PSC inquiry that all the connected papers had been returned to the Permanent Secretary the next day itself with the endorsement that the police can find nothing incriminating against me. The file they were looking for, which was said to contain details concerning a bribery allegation against a family member of a VIP, was later located in the Attorney General's Department. On the morning following the search of my house, I was served with an interdiction order, informing me that my transfer abroad on a foreign posting was cancelled (the Prime Minister at whose request I had readily agreed to go was not even informed) and that I should not report for duty to the Foreign Ministry until further notice. No reason whatsoever was given. I was placed on 1/3rd of my salary. Requests Things started to move when 3 1/2 years after my interdiction, the principal of a school, where I had been teaching before I entered the overseas service, as it was then called and been pleased with my work as a teacher, dropped in at my home one day and on being told that up to that time I had not been informed of the reason for my interdiction, asked me whether I had any objection to his finding out why I was being kept under interdiction without being told why. I told him he could do just that and nothing more because I was not seeking re-instatement at that stage. All I wanted was that I be paid my full salary. This particular principal had a friend who happened to be the family doctor of a member of the PSC. I was taken to the doctor who asked me for a complete account of what had happened. He came back to me in a day and said that the particular member of the PSC who was his close friend had wanted me to see him in his office. I saw him as directed and he asked me what the matter was all about. He, a senior civil servant, who had retired by then, told me he had personally, not seen a scrap of paper about my case. He told me he would call for the relevant papers and asked me to contact him over the telephone (having given one disguised code name which I should use) whenever I wished to know what progress was being made in the matter. Thereafter, he had personally taken the case up with the chairman and the other member of the commission. About the same time the then Prime Minister too had been informed of the injustice being done to me and together they had firmly directed the permanent secretary to re-instate me forthwith or frame charges, if there were any. A hurriedly drawn up charge sheet was then served on me 3 1/2 years after the date of interdiction. The PSC had then instructed the Permanent Secretary to suggest the name of a senior public servant to conduct the inquiry. He had given the name of an officer who had been his deputy when he was the General Manager of a State Trading Organization. The officer concerned was my contemporary in the university and did economics while I offered philosophy for the special degree. When he wrote to me requesting me to appear before him I promptly protested to the PSC that I will be tried by no one other than my peers. I wrote that the inquiry officer was my permanent secretary's deputy at one stage, and that, what was worse, strictures had been passed on his conduct by a commission of inquiry that probed the work of the trading organization where my permanent secretary had been earlier the general manager. The PSC promptly upheld my objection and asked the permanent secretary to nominated someone else. Against the second nominee too I raised an objection which too was upheld by the PSC. The chairman of the PSC then took the unprecedented step of directing his brother commissioner, who was also a highly respected civil servant and had ended his career as head of the public service to send for me and ask me to suggest a name. He contacted me through the commissioner to whom I had first related my tale of woe and asked me to see him in his bungalow. One morning, immediately thereafter, I saw the commissioner in his bungalow with fear and trembling. For, to us junior public servants, in that era - the so-called bad old days the members of the PSC had the standing of supreme court judges. I told the commissioner so and mentioned to him that I had taken courage to see him only because his Chairman had directed me to do so. 'Quite in order, Jaya-weera. Quite in order. Don't feel embarrassed. You have come at our request.' He then invited me to breakfast with his wife and himself and having ascertained from me my side of the story, requested me to nominate any officer I wanted. I was taken aback and told him that in effect, he was asking an accused in a trial to nominate the trial judge. He explained that he was suggesting that procedure because he and the other members of the PSC wanted to ensure that I would have faith in the fairness of the individual who would hold the inquiry. I refused to name an individual but told the commissioner that I would be more than satisfied if I could be given a retired judicial officer. He said they would have to go through the panel of judges they have and would send for one in a couple of days. This he did as promised, but on seeing me he said ravishingly: 'We have only one man free to undertake the inquiry - but I can tell you, he will hang you even before hearing you. Do you know you are known as a Maha Kalu Sinhalaya in the Public Service and this particular chap hates your type. You leave the matter in our hands. We will give you a fair and impartial man.' Indeed they did. A senior civil servant who had been a permanent secretary and also served as an ambassador in an Asian country was ultimately nominated. He gave me a very fair hearing, doing the questioning himself. But my permanent secretary refused to accept the verdict. He wanted an year's increment stopped. The chairman then sent for me and asked: 'Tell me, Jayaweera, what does this man have against you?' He was referring to the permanent secretary. The Chairman advised me to accept the year's pay cut because, as he pointed out, I had already voluntarily lost an year's increment by my failure to pass the 2nd E. B. examination at the appointed time. 'You go back, since you have already suffered for 4 years and send us an appeal.' Each of the commissioners sent for me personally and apologised for what the permanent secretary, whom I had spoken to only once, had done. I was thankful and lucky that the PSC members of that day were down-to-earth, honest, honourable, and god-fearing men. Are universal social standards possible? The second part of the address by Julius K. Nyerere, Chairman of the South Centre, on May 26 1998 in Berne, Switzerland, at the Conference for Sustainable Development organized by the Swiss Coalition for Development. The first part was published yesterday. Yet the idea that the rich countries should be legally bound to help the poor ones to meet those social standards is rejected. Proposals for an international tax of any kind, for any purpose, are dismissed as absurd. Indeed, the poor countries come under immense pressure even to cut back on domestic redistributive taxation. Under international conditionalities, it is made increasingly difficult for these countries to tax their own rich in order to improve the social standards of their own poor. The sheer impossibility of poor countries meeting social standards set at levels fixed by the rich has now, however, been generally accepted. The demand that labour standards be a factor in trade policy has therefore been modified. It has now become a proposal that all countries should implement 'core labour standards'. And these require an acceptance of freedom of association and collective bargaining the abolition of child labour and of forced labour, and a ban on discrimination in employment practices. Most of these requirements are already included in ILO Conventions or other international Agreements which have been accepted by almost all countries. Nonetheless, breaches in these core labour standards do often occur. Usually a country's failure to implement the Convention which it signed is connected with its own poverty - and the concurrent existence of gross inequalities of income both at the national and the international level. Within democratic countries (developed or developing), the needs of the poor or the less rich cannot always be ignored with impunity by the government or the ruling class. Even in dictatorships the rulers do find necessary to respond to strong protests from their people. The same is true within a community of nations; if the community is to survive, the need for some kind of consensus among rich and less rich member nations gives some leverage to the less rich members. In the world at large, however, there is neither international democracy nor any clear centre of authority at which the poor can direct their protests. For example, when the world price of copper falls by 50 per cent in one week, the national income of Zambia drops like a stone; its workers will protest (perhaps violently). But they direct their anger at the Government of Zambia, which has no power at all in this matter. What else can the workers do? They cannot affect the decisions of this vague thing called the international 'market', even though what poor Zambia has lost some wealthy countries have gained. The poor of Zambia are without influence in this matter. But the Government of Zambia has no influence either. The wealthy countries which have gained from the changed price of copper go on their way rejoicing - and without anyone being in any position to make them pay a price for their gains. When the value of the Indonesian Rupia tumbles down for reasons which have little to do with the fundamentals of the Indonesian economy, the anger of the people is directed at the Government of Indonesia. The faceless international financial market which triggered that process bears no blame! It is worth remembering that Governments of the South are not always overthrown because they do not care about the plight of the poor of their own countries. Very often popular protests which lead to the resignation (or overthrow) of a Southern government have their source in the IMF. We used to call them 'IMF Bread Riots': people are condemning their government because it has been unable to resist demands from the IMF either to fulfil some universal standards established by the rich North, or to cut the living standards of the poor of their own countries. The representatives of the IMF who bring such policy demands - and the accompanying threats of further sanctions against the country - take care to have returned to their own headquarters base before the policies they demand are implemented. It is their government upon whom the people vent their anger, and in so doing further worsen their living standards! The rich and powerful countries of the world preach democracy to the poor nations and when it suits them they are liable to apply sanctions against those countries which they designate as undemocratic or acting against human rights. But the same preachers of democracy at the national level fight actively against any kind of democracy at the international level. And for that reason, the international organizations and institutions where the principle of one-country one-vote operates are denied any power. The organizations and institutions which have power are those where the principle of one-dollar one-vote operates. Hence the powerlessness of the General Assembly of the United Nations, UNCTAD, UNESCO and other institutions of that kind: and hence the overwhelming power of the Security Council of the United Nations, of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO where there is no pretence whatsoever to democracy. The reality is that universal social standards are not possible, and certainly would not be compatible with justice, unless they are linked to , and are conditional upon, the parallel implementation of a deliberate, coherent, and internally consistent anti-poverty programme - both nationally and internationally. They are not possible unless all human beings - men and women - are accorded equal dignity through the workings of all economic, social, and political structures. And further, before there can in justice be any question of having 'universal social standards' (however defined), the equality of all sovereign nations must be recognised not just nominally and theoretically; but it must be the actual basis for all economic, social and political relations between nations. And from recent events it is quite clear that Universal Social Standards will not be possible while international financial movements remain chaotic and unregulated. Indeed universal social standards are not compatible with unfettered competition in the global market. For if there is no effective restraint upon the rich and the strong then their interests will prevail, regardless of the needs (let alone the interests) of the poor. In this fact lies the almost unanimous Southern hostility to the proposal that 'Trade Related Social Standards' be brought into the orbit of the WTO rather than (or as well as) the ILO. For compared to the WTO, the ILO is democratic in structure, and it does not seek to usurp the national sovereignty of any state. Developing countries see no need for further international intervention beyond the existence, and the present powers of the ILO. And furthermore, past experience in other areas has demonstrated that if the WTO is given powers to apply sanctions on this matter they will be used exclusively against the developing countries and even then - not with any consistency. They will become another stick to use against a developing country (democratic or otherwise) which tries to determine its own domestic policies in any area, and to implement them. It does not take much imagination to see how such powers in the hands of the WTO could be used by the USA against Cuba; it takes a great deal of imagination, however, to believe that such power would be used against the USA on any grounds whatsoever! Finally, word on solidarity: in this struggle against the injustice of poverty and the powerlessness of the poor, the solidarity of the people in the North - including people in this country - is essential for ultimate success. Indeed, the poor in the developing countries will not be able to achieve decent living conditions for themselves without active solidarity from people in the North who believe in justice and equality but are themselves not necessarily poor, and who have some power in their own countries. These are the people who have access to the media of the North, who have democratic power to influence the policies of their governments, and who can influence the actions of transnational corporations based in the North. This Conference of non-governmental organizations in Switzerland is an encouragement and a support to the poor of the world. I ask you to continue the work you are doing, and to intensify it. For the world is One. Globalization is now a fact of modern life. Together we can change it into a force for good - for the good of all the peoples of the world. It can be done. Play your part. Courtesy: South Letter |
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