Education: Breaking the shackles of Ideology

By Dharisha Bastians 

The fight for free education is a romantic notion. It captures the public imagination and turns armchair critics and disengaged youth into activists and demonstrators. As the march of the orange T-shirts bearing 6% slogans bore down on the capital Colombo in September, it began to look as if the only thing Sri Lankans could agree on was that there was a debilitating crisis in the education sector.

Buddhist monks, representatives across the political spectrum and ordinary men and women converged at mass rallies organized by the Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) in Colombo and other parts of the island. The academic unions were demanding, among other things, that the Government invest 6% of GDP in education.

But 100 days after the university dons pledged to agitate for broad sector reform, the trade union coalition called off their strike without a tangible compromise on their demands. The suspension of trade union action has angered members of the public who got behind the campaign of agitation after FUTA stopped talking about a 20% wage increase and began to harp on the 6% allocation – which would presumably mean better paid academics in the long term. With the state having made serious blunders in the education sphere recently, bungling Advanced Level test scores and examination papers, the call for coherent policy in the sector resonated with the general public. Naturally, these crowds of supporters felt short-changed and abandoned when the unions threw in the towel and returned to work. In the long run however, that might prove a blessing in disguise.

While the academics’ union deserves credit for highlighting an issue of tremendous importance to ordinary Sri Lankans, FUTA and socialist student unions remain part of the problem and not the solution in the education sector. On every critical reform factor, from diversifying education to allowing greater private sector play – with regulation – to ease the burden on tax-payers, to making universities more productive and competitive internationally, these unions have stood in the way.

At a Forum discussion moderated by Opposition Lawmaker Eran Wickremaratne, FUTA President and History Lecturer at the University of Colombo Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri noted with incredulity that someone had once suggested to him that his Department train students to make a living as tour guides. “This is what people think universities should be doing,” he scoffed. Yet despite the FUTA President’s views on the matter, the truth is that most history graduates will ultimately go on to demand state sector jobs. Unable to compete and lacking skills to make them employable in the private sector, many arts graduates are recruited into the inflated public sector as clerical officers.

With the exception of the ‘elite’ faculties –medicine, engineering, management and law – the problem of employability remains a fundamental failing of Sri Lanka’s university system. A free education, financed entirely by the Sri Lankan tax-payer, culminates in employment that is also paid for with taxation.  In the face of it, even churning out graduate tour guides could be an improvement. Instead most university students go from being student union activists reiterating their ‘right’ to free tertiary education, to being unemployed degree-holders believing the government owes them because they are products of a system that simply cannot compete.

In fact competition is the last thing the unions want. Student unions are vehemently opposed to Government plans to increase private sector investment in education, with the standard battle-cry that the free education system is under siege. Yet some analysts argue that the entry of private universities accredited and regulated by the University Grants Commission would ease the burden on state universities. Affordability and the proximity to home in exchange for an internationally recognized diploma, could encourage some students to study at private institutes despite having made the grade for local universities. Fewer students at state universities would allow for a more equitable distribution of education resources, with more money available to spend on infrastructure upgrades and competitive remuneration that would help Sri Lanka to retain its brightest minds as educationists.

While the incumbent Government has sought to make private universities a keystone of its higher education policy, riling up student unions that persist in viewing it as a capitalist conspiracy, the fact remains that private higher education institutes have long since gained more than just a foothold in the country. From primary to tertiary level, educational institutes are mushrooming throughout the island, symbols of the demand for greater education opportunities. The denial of standardization and in some cases assistance to these institutes by the Government is in itself a great disservice to hundreds of thousands of students who do not attend state universities. Free education cannot mean education for a minute percentage of the student population that makes the cut for local universities. Withholding education from the many, as the unions seek to do, is hardly consistent with making education accessible to all.  Success stories in other sectors, including telecom and banking, are testament to the fact that private sector partnership which both complements and competes with the state sector ultimately eases the burden on the tax-payer and forces state institutions to reform in order to compete. While it might be a tenet of social justice that every citizen should have access to education, it does not necessarily follow that education should be state funded welfare.

Their resistance to reform aside, FUTA and the student unions have provided one major breakthrough in terms of envisioning education policy. The need for greater state spending – and consequently, greater focus – on education. The Government has pledged to make the country a ‘knowledge hub’ but Sri Lanka remains the lowest spender on education in the region.

Spending on education has been on the decline since 1995, but has plummeted to record lows since 2005. Last year, the Government allocation for education was a meagre 1.9% of GDP (Central Bank Annual Report 2011) with further cuts imminent. If Sri Lanka is to progress at the revised rate of 6.8% economic growth this year and forecasted growth of 7.3% in 2013, the country’s GDP would be in the range of Rs. 7.5 trillion (CBSL projection). Spending on education in 2013 according to the Government’s Appropriation Bill presented in October would amount to 65.8 billion – which by these estimates is a meagre 0.88% of GDP.  The Appropriations Bill estimates Government Expenditure of Rs. 2.5 trillion in 2013 making the education allocation roughly 2.6% of total expenditure. Compared to the Defence budget of Rs. 289.5 billion in peace time and given the crises in the health and education sectors that directly deal with human development, this seems an overly modest figure. It also flies in the face of a massive campaign of agitation for increased spending in the sector. The UNESCO benchmark for Government investment in education is 6% of GDP, but policy-makers argue it is not the number that is key, but the equitable and meaningful distribution of funds. Yet as the post-strike days wear on, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Government has no coherent action plan to fix the education sector, and the trade unionists may just have capitulated too quickly.

Traditionally, Sri Lankans have never backed trade union action. It is often viewed as damaging to the greater populace because it cripples the services sector. For the first time, FUTA made Sri Lankans believe that theirs was a different kind of struggle, one that spoke to peoples’ hearts: It was about their children. But that is perhaps precisely why the struggle for education policy reform may need new custodians. If the time is ripe for tough choices to be made in the education sector, policy cannot be held hostage to the ideology of political forces. Sri Lanka’s youth, as main stakeholders of the struggle must be at the heart of reform. Reform that will not only safeguard the principle of free education, but will finally set the system free.