Title: University education in Sri Lanka in context: consequences of deteriorating standards

Author(s): Bruce Matthews

Source: Pacific Affairs. 68.1 (Spring 1995): p77.
Document Type: Article
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1995 The University of British Columbia - Pacific Affairs
http://pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/
Full Text:

It was 1989, at the height of the second Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation
Front) attempted insurrection. I was at the University of Peradeniya for two months. I found
myself working virtually alone in the university's vast, splendid library. At the time, I
attributed this to the fact that the JVP had effectively closed all of the country's southern
universities.(1) But this was not the only cause for the emptiness of this usually busy
location. The main reason was the rumour that the JVP intended to detonate a bomb and
destroy the library. Given the fact the university campus had been a safe house for the JVP for
over a year and that many JVP activists were students at Peradeniya, this strategy of
menacing the island's most famous university library seemed highly symbolic. It was also
clearly a case of plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, for, as E. R. Sarathchchandra has
noted, the JVP made a similar gesture in the first insurrection of 1971.(2) Thus the
Peradeniya library has at least twice been a magnet for grievance, alienation and protest. This
was so for several reasons. For one thing, its resources were still largely in English, the
language of colonial domination. Further, despite considerable effort to ease access to the
university for those from rural backgrounds, Peradeniya still represented an arena for class
struggle. It had come to represent the hierarchical nature of Sinhala society. The library (with
perhaps the vice-chancellor's adjacent office) was seen as the place of privilege and elitism.

The JVP has subsequently been eliminated as an immediate threat to the state.
Notwithstanding this, many of the issues involved at the heart of the two JVP revolutionary
eras of 1971 and 1989 remain more or less intact. They continue to put enormous pressure on
the universities, chiefly as simmering and unresolved ideological claims. (Possibly the same
could be said of the impact of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on university life in the
north and east of Sri Lanka.) Nor are the issues raised pertinent only to the universities. It is
my claim that in many ways the universities are a microcosm of Lankan society as a whole. If
this is so, it is useful to examine the general question of university education in Sri Lanka
primarily because the topic presents a number of different perspectives on current challenges
facing the nation.

This paper has three objectives. First, it sets down a brief history of how the universities have
struggled to adjust to the chaotic political realities that have befallen the country after
independence.(3) This resulted in the politicization of certain aspects of university education,
notably in admissions and academic programs. Second, it is argued that Sri Lanka's
universities, in particular their students and faculty, have not been able to adjust easily to the
changes that have been required of them. Although it may appear as if most students are
apolitical, there are au fond elements of widespread distress. These include, paradoxically,
both student apathy and violence. Faculty, on the other hand, are often detached, simply
unable to communicate with students in a comfortable, scholarly environment. Some of these
attitudes are to be expected, given the overcrowded and underfunded nature of the university
infrastructure. But other indicators suggest much deeper sources of student alienation. These
reflect not just academic grievances, but extended repudiation of the social, economic and
political system that has evolved in modern Sri Lanka. Third, what some of the ramifications
of these attitudes are for the universities and for the country are reviewed. I argue that in
many ways the universities remain the anvil for an ongoing hierarchical strain. It is this
struggle that lies at the heart of Sri Lanka's multiple problems, including its ethnic
communalism. An analysis of the universities allows us to see this critical matter more
clearly.

Turning to the first point, a chronology of the recent history of university education in Sri
Lanka might begin with the foundation of the University of Ceylon in 1942 and, in 1948, its
move to Peradeniya under its renowned vice-chancellor, Sir Ivor Jennings. These "foundation
years" saw the introduction of a classical conception of the university as a place of academic
achievement. Although it was not just a matter of the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself
(there was, after all, a Faculty of Medicine and, in 1949, of Engineering), university
education was largely in the British scholastic tradition. Subjects were taught in the English
language by both foreign and indigenous teachers, all highly qualified, many quite celebrated.
Students lived in gracious quarters and in complete ethnic harmony. This model seemed
appropriate to the spirit of consociationalism that existed in the parliament - the rule by
English-speaking elites who "represented" Ceylon's multicultural society of the time.(4)

Jennings' era, with its sense of order and high academic standards, has not yet been forgotten.
Many of its graduates hark back wistfully to those halcyon years. Nonetheless, as a system
for the future, clearly the Peradeniya model would not suffice. For one thing, it was quickly
perceived as being too Westernized. (Even its toilets were of the Western type, the cause of
future embarrassment and even resentment when students from the villages were admitted.)
Second, with a registration of less than a thousand, Peradeniya could not possibly meet the
demands of the future. There were cautions not to expand the university system too quickly,
but by 1959 the race was on to make way for a rapidly accelerating demand for admission
into the system.(5) Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara (two Buddhist monastic institutions) were
converted to secular use and given university status. In 1967, the University of Colombo was
formally established (though there had long been a distinguished college in the city that had
offered external degrees through the University of London). More importantly, the
universities relinquished their autonomy (especially critical in matters of program and
admissions) to a new Ministry of Education. Up to this point, not much effort had been made
to adapt higher education to the country's overall social and economic needs. As A. D. V. de
S. Indraratna has observed, "unrestricted admissions to university without any regard for the
social and economic needs of the country created a multitude of problems."(6)

The 1970s were a difficult decade for universities in Sri Lanka. The ruling United Front-Sri
Lanka Freedom party educational policies resulted, as K. M. de Silva has observed, in "seven
bleak years."(7) English was finally removed as the language of instruction. The slow process
of introducing the vernacular languages (swabasha) was completed just about the same time
the JVP went into rebellion in March 1971. This insurrection resulted in the closure of the
universities for fifteen months. It was also a time when a new, politically expedient procedure
of admissions ("standardization") was introduced, based on a national language quota.
Inevitably, this policy effectively reduced Tamil registrations by two-thirds.(8) Indraratna and
others have argued that "the remedy was worse than the disease . . . sewing the seeds of the
subsequent ethnic conflict."(9) It may have seemed like a small change, but it resonated
among the Ceylon Tamils into the growing fund of felt abuses and neglect. Finally, in 1979,
"standardization" was replaced by a three-tier admissions policy based on a national merit
quota (30 percent), a regional or district merit quota (55 percent) and a special allocation to
thirteen backward districts, or about half the country (15 percent). These percentages were
adjusted in 1986 (40 percent, 65 percent and 5 percent accordingly).(10) But as K. M. de
Silva has pointed out, the quota system "brought into the universities large numbers of
students who were ill-equipped for university education and who failed examinations
regularly - like many in the student leadership of the mid- and late-1980s, they proceeded
thereafter to vent their rage on the university system at large."(11)

Some important structural changes were introduced in this decade, including the
establishment of the University of Jaffna (1974). Further, with the election of a new
government in 1977, the Universities Act No. 16 (1978) introduced an entirely new Ministry
of Higher Education as well as a so-called University Grants Commission.(12) Appointed by
the president of Sri Lanka, the latter's seven members were responsible for the allocation of
funds and coordination of teaching and research. But they were as well watchdogs, making
sure that the universities conformed to an increasingly politicized national education policy.

Further expansion of the university system in the 1980s was inevitable, given the intense
political pressure to make this perceived access to prosperity available to as many as possible.
The Eastern University (Batticaloa), Kelaniya (formerly Vidyalankara), Sri Jayawardenepura
(formerly Vidyodaya), Moratuwa, Ruhunu and an Open University were all given degree-
granting status at this time. But they represented only part of the picture of advanced
education. Important educational institutions that were independent of the Ministry of Higher
Education and that offered degree programs included the Law College, an Institute of
Chartered Accountants, a defence academy (Kotelawala), a Buddhist and Pali University and,
for nearly a decade, a private medical college (North Colombo).(13) In addition, other
institutions offering tertiary-level professional training (viz., technical colleges, agricultural
schools, education colleges) were rapidly evolving. But despite these advantages and a
promising start to the decade, the 1980s are best known for the sudden collapse of the
educational system due to the shattering crisis provoked by the 1987 Indo-Lankan Accord.

This provided for an enormous outpouring of Sinhalese discontent which had been brewing
since the outbreak of open defiance against the state by various Tamil paramilitary
organizations in 1983. The JVP proved adept at capturing the emotional momentum on the
campuses, quickly eliminating other student Sinhala "patriotic" (deshapremi) organizations
(e.g., the Sinhala Tharuna Sanvidhanaya). The JVP further harnessed suspicions that a
Parliamentary Select Committee established to look into the "grave and unsettled conditions
prevailing in all of the university campuses" was really planning to eliminate the quota
system and to raise the minimum entrance mark. (This committee did not immediately
publish its conclusions, leading to rumours and speculation.)(14) In a strategic move, the JVP
used this rumour to link up their revolutionary cause with the secondary schools. The upshot
was the closure of Lanka's schools and southern universities for the better part of two years, a
situation which A. C. S. Hameed (the then minister of higher education) rightly called "a
national disaster."(15) Making use of an ostensibly "patriotic" rallying cry ("Palaweni
mawbima, deweni upadhiya" - "First the Motherland, second education"), paradoxically the
JVP found the university campuses to offer the best conditions of refuge and protection from
the police. When the undergraduate facilities did open for the odd rare hopeful month (e.g.,
October 1987; January 1988), the JVP were in place to take immediate command with their
so-called "action committees" (kriyahari kamituva). Mass rallies and show trials, public
humiliations, and even floggings and executions were standard features of what remained of
university life.(16) It was, of course, a bad time everywhere in Sri Lanka. K. M. de Silva
summarizes the period by noting that the violence in the universities both reflected the
breakdown of the island's political system and as well contributed to the state's near collapse.
(17) A beleaguered government even lifted its proscription on the JVP in May 1988 and
restrained police from entering the campuses in an attempt to placate the rebels. But when
these and other overtures failed, the new government of President Ranasinghe Premadasa and
Minister of Defence Ranjan Wijeratue unleashed the apparently unavoidable reign of terror
that slowly destroyed the JVP. With the capture and demise of JVP leadership by the end of
1989, this strange chapter in the history of university education in Lanka was, for the moment
at least, ended. The closure of the universities during these troubled times produced further
havoc with admissions and in-course programs, especially at the undergraduate level. Huge
backlogs of aspiring entrants were only slowly admitted into the already overburdened
system. Normal total undergraduate registration would have been about 20,000, but after
1989 this figure took on another third (to 29,000), with no appreciable enlargement of the
university infrastructure itself.(18) The situation has persisted, with a waiting period for
admission for high-school graduates still in the range of two years. Indraratna points out that
today, total enrollment in higher education in Sri Lanka (including technical colleges, the
Open University and other special institutes) is about 60,000, or 3.65 percent of the age group
of 20-24 years, less than 0.4 percent of the population.(19) By 1994/95, it is estimated that
undergraduate enrolment alone will be as high as 40,000 (with another 20,000 at the Open
University and 30,000 in various other tertiary education institutions). New undergraduate
programs or opportunities are thus desperately needed to accommodate this certain increase.
It is with this in mind that in 1990 the University Grants Commission recommended the
introduction of nine so-called "Affiliated University Colleges," one for each province.(20)
Although separate institutions in their own right, they remain affiliated to, or monitored by,
existing universities. Two things in particular should be noted about these colleges. For one,
although they require the same admissions standard as the eight so-called "national"
universities, admissions are first open to those who sat the advanced level examinations as far
back as 1987 but who have still been unable to enter the system. Second, in an innovative
move, the affiliated colleges are requiring core courses in English, computer science, business
management and environmental and Lankan studies for everybody. It would appear that the
colleges will not offer degrees but diplomas or certificates in sought-after subjects of a
"practical" nature, professionally and vocationally oriented, and targeted to specific areas of
employment.

By way of summary, I have argued that failure to promote accomplishment in Sri Lanka's
universities could be attributed to the "democratization" of admissions, the JVP disruptions,
the ethnic civil war and, perhaps most importantly, the insufficient allocation of budgetary
resources. There have been some innovative attempts (e.g., the affiliated colleges) to loosen
the bottleneck at the point of admission to undergraduate programs.

To carry the matter further, mention should be made of two important initiatives by the
government to address the larger issue of undergraduate university programs, in order to
make them more pertinent to employment and the developmental needs of the country in
general. These are, first, the Report of the Presidential Commission on Youth (1990), a
strikingly different review of the country's leading problem, given the fact that there have
been three major rebellions engineered largely by disaffected young people within the past
two decades.(21) Provoked largely because of the JVP and the LTTE, the commission's report
nonetheless remains a cri de coeur for a whole generation, reflecting as it does a widespread
"crisis of values" among the young everywhere in Sri Lanka. This led directly to a National
Education Commission and its first report (1992), a far-seeing document that sets down
"new" goals of education in terms of its relationship to the individual, to the economy, to the
culture and to nation building. In his independent analysis of these objectives, Indraratna
proposes four key educational aims: to ensure equity and social justice; to turn out critical,
socially responsible and economically productive citizens; to develop professional and
vocational skills to meet the manpower needs of Sri Lanka and, most importantly perhaps, to
promote national harmony, political stability and social cohesion in a multiethnic,
multilingual and multireligious society.(22) It could be argued that the government and
concerned authorities have tried to address these issues in new educational policies. But they
certainly have not achieved a harmonious outcome in the national universities, which remain
captive in many ways to highly charged activist movements and radicalism of one sort or
another.

A second theme is the maladjustment of undergraduate student bodies to the university

conditions they are obliged to live and work in, and their intolerance toward those who do not
share their opinions. There are many signs of distress. In evaluating these matters it is
important to indicate that there are those who will claim that most students are politically
indifferent, and that only a relatively small number of firebrands are responsible for making
the national universities such hostile, arrogant and unforgiving places. This may in fact be the
case. What is evident, however, is that a radical element continues to be ascendent and totally
in control of declared student opinion. In this regard, the Youth Commission pointed out that
"there was little doubt that the nature and quality of education provided in our universities has
significantly contributed to youth unrest."(23) What this comment focuses on specifically is
the fact that the expected benefits of university education in Sri Lanka do not often appear to
be realized in terms of employment.

This should not strike us as being a situation novel to Sri Lanka alone. But to many students
the university programs are seen to be in league with the devil, so to speak, offering little
access to a seemingly impenetrable hierarchical social and economic order still based on
elitism and privilege. A first and primary student grievance in this regard is against the
continued use of the English language as a gauge of academic proficiency and a key to
successful employment. This objection is voiced as a Kulturkampf, often through a
movement such as the Jathika Chintanaya ("national ideology"), which has had a big impact
on the Colombo campus in particular. English is seen as the "sword" (kaduwa) that divides
the haves from the have-nots, the life of opportunity from the life of mediocrity and failure.
(24) The dominance of English is also seen as an archaic survival of the colonial era, an
acknowledgement that somehow Sinhalese is not a "scientific" or "modern" language, that it
has no scholarly or utilitarian value. In many ways the student objection to English language
skillfulness is understandable. Although no university faculties or other state educational
institutions (incidentally, these do not include the many new fee-paying "international"
secondary and diploma schools) use English as an official language of instruction, the fact is
that access to the language is critical, especially in science, engineering, technical subjects
(e.g., computers) and law. And, although public sector employment does not depend on
English (except for high-level appointments), nonetheless, as the 1983 Marga-UNESCO
report indicates, "the private sector by contrast favours the use of particularistic criteria in
selection, laying greater emphasis on proficiency in English, personality and social
standing."(25) It is an acknowledged fact that English-speaking graduates of the great schools
(some of them still fee-paying or "private") like St. Thomas's, Trinity or Ananda, especially if
they are well-known for family pedigree or athletic prowess, are much sought after by
Colombo's commercial houses.

The central problem here is that rural students are rarely well prepared in English at the
secondary level and cannot properly compete either at the university or after graduation. In a
recent report on the teaching and learning of English in Sri Lanka, Chitra Ranawaka
maintains that the weakest link is the lack of good teachers in the country's ten-thousand-odd
schools.(26) All students admitted to university are obliged to take an entrance proficiency
examination and a remedial course if they fail, which most do. One recent report indicates
acceptable proficiency at this point of only 16.7 percent for entering arts students, 33 percent
for science students and 55 percent for students in medicine, law and other professions.(27)
But a mediocre cram course in English endured by an unwilling student does not even
remotely produce the desired result. It is particularly unfortunate that the majority of schools
essentially deny students the opportunity or even encouragement to do something about
English in the first place, before the rigors of university. The "district quota" system imposed
on university admissions fifteen years ago merely exacerbated this issue, although to be fair
to the country's politicians, there was no alternative at that time but to open the universities
wide to the large numbers of rural aspirants, many of whom came from depressed
circumstances and lower castes. One indication of the seriousness of this issue is reflected in
the fact that at the University of Colombo an estimated 70 percent of students are from non-
urban backgrounds.

Neither is lack of proficiency in English the only element that confounds these students.
There are as well adverse economic conditions, worsened by such things as insufficient
access to university accommodations. Even at the universities beyond Colombo, the matter of
student residence is a major cause of student grievance, but Colombo's plight has mutated
itself into a struggle against the university authorities on numerous fronts. Lack of student
residential ("hostel") facilities became suddenly acute when the backlog of 1986/89 entering
students ("batches") were finally admitted in 1990, along with the hundreds of "freshers"
from that year. The academic programs at Colombo were completely overwhelmed by
numbers. Residential space at Colombo's three hostels could absorb less than one third of the
sixty-four hundred students needing a place to live. With university residences charging only
a nominal fee of between Rs. 15 to 75 (maximum) per month, and outside lodgings (often of
very inferior quality) at Rs. 1500 per month, the cause for concern is clearly evident.(28) (A
state or Mahapola scholarship pays only Rs. 950 per month, insufficient to cover the gap.)
Manori Wijesekera reports cases of ten female students to a room, as they must compete for
limited space with the women employed in Colombo's widespread garment industry. Stories
of rent being paid for by sexual favours are also not uncommon.(29) One reaction to this
impossibility actually closed the Colombo campus down for a few weeks in 1992 when
student activists calculatedly demanded that classrooms in the English Department (seen as
"under-utilized") be converted into college hostels.

Up to this point, student anxieties about the ineluctable presence of English in the university
and in their possible future work environment and the pressures associated with overcrowded
facilities have been examined as major sources of protest. Though a collateral issue, one
related topic warrants a brief review, and that is the phenomenon of student ragging.

It could be argued that ragging is a result of an admissions policy that suddenly throws
students from widely different social backgrounds together. In a country like Sri Lanka,
where the hierarchical nature of society, either as caste or class, is very pronounced, giving
those from underprivileged backgrounds power to "initiate" new students (especially young
women and those from the great schools) can be problematic. But the issue is deeper than
this, for ragging is also a form of protest against authority of any kind - university, the law,
even traditional social norms and customs. A central difficulty is that in Sri Lanka, ragging
has become unusually cruel and indecent. Some maintain that Lanka's universities have
always had ragging, but that sadistic ragging emerged only after the 1971 JVP insurrection.
(30) The 1990 Presidential Youth Commission points out how the breakdown of the
traditional family and violence in the home has become "accepted" in society. (This a central
feature of its section entitled "Youth Alienation and the Erosion of Institutions.")(31) Not
unexpectedly, opinions on this matter range from the benign to the passionate. K. M. de Silva,
for example, avers that ragging is a small factor, not a matter of social background (after all,
"there are good cultural values in the villages"). Its dark side, he claims, is the product of
"other psychological factors."(32) On the other hand, from personal experience I know of too
many families whose children have opted not to attend university because of the spectre of
obscene ragging (which has recently been known to sometimes include bottle-rape
molestation of girls by other women students in a society where virginity is still an
acknowledged value). D. C. H. Senarath is probably correct when he points out that apart
from the usual rationalizations about ragging (e.g., it promotes "bonding" and "equalizes"
those who come from better schools and backward schools), many raggers have serious
problems at home, deep-seated jealousies and inferiority feelings of one kind or another (a
visiting upon the victim what was visited upon you, sort of thing).(33) Whatever the etiology
of these practices are, they are nonetheless keenly associated with violent groups whose
dictates most students promptly fall into line with. Are such groups mere maverick bands of
bullies, or do they represent a class struggle (expressed sometimes in "cultural" terms) of a
kind that, ironically, manifests itself in the halls of learning?

This discussion of various forms of student activism and protest is by no means complete.
There are other issues that might be raised to complement the points discussed (e.g., the
history of student unions and councils, a frequent arena of protest and power-mongering).(34)
However, the point to be emphasized in the present paper is that the generally deteriorating
standards of university education in Sri Lanka are clearly linked to the world beyond the
university in both cause and consequence.

A concluding aim of this inquiry is to reflect on what the ramifications of this distress are,
and what steps might be taken to reduce agitation and enlarge the prospects of higher
education in Sri Lanka. This might best be done by making five independent observations.
First, it can be said that the universities have been severely wounded, perhaps more so than
any other social institution, by Sri Lanka's modern political trauma. The universities show
this quite vividly and immediately - the scars of politicization, ethnic chauvinism and class
struggle are all there, frequently uncontrolled, running amok with ruinous consequences. One
upshot of this is that among students there appears to be no lowest common denominator of
acceptable behaviour (some may insist that this is a mere reflection of a general absence of
public morality). Further, there is no clear notion of how to keep the universities functioning
in the face of determined student agitators with their own political agenda (usually too
radicalized, fanatical and uncompromising to be expressed in terms associated with one or
other of the mainline parliamentary political parties). In short, the universities are "war
zones" of a type, not at all what Ivor Jennings and his like of forty years ago had in mind.

Second, the rapid expansion of higher education in Sri Lanka - too often for purposes of
political expediency - has created a glut of almost unresolvable problems. The Marga-
UNESCO report identifies some of these as the lack of relevance in the content and structure
of the higher education system; a program mismatch in quantitative and qualitative terms; a
"rural exodus" (in part to the universities) and a related raising of expectations that cannot be
met.(35) The latter issue has been particularly thorny. It is clear that the causal correlation
between education and employment is an illusion many entertain when they come to
university, a chance to break loose from rural constraints or class or caste stigma. What really
counts is performance (based on the knowledge of English and other social qualities), a not
inconsiderable consequence of failing to keep English available as a language of intellectual
communication. One thing is clear. Whatever the reasons, E. R. Sarathchchandra has
identified a serious communications gap, "an attitude . . . a fundamental difference in
outlook . . . that almost all young people share."(36) This illusive "attitude" referred to by
Sarathchchandra can be largely couched in terms of cultural hubris.

This leads me to a third consideration: how to adjust Sri Lanka's university programs and
lifestyle to its cultural and social needs, not just its economic ones. Here the bete noire is the
persistance of the British university model that critics say will only continue to raise the level
of frustration and alienation among the island's youth. The 1990 Presidential Youth
Commission takes an entire chapter to reflect on this and related problems of perceived
"Westernization." It notes that Lanka's "trauma of transition" has been made acute because of
Western influence, Western intrusions and the "Western narcissistic enjoyment culture."(37)
These impositions are seen to clash with a traditional system based on respect for parents,
elders and outsiders, and a "sense of shame." Respect and shame, the report continues to
emphasize, were "cultivated in our religious education . . . our labour system and especially
in the family . . . [they] held the social fabric together, laid out accepted forms of conduct and
standards of behaviour, which gave order and expectation to society . . . . It made life organic
to the community and prevented alienation and isolation, some of the major causes of present
day youth unrest. Our people have therefore been forced to live what one expert called a
'schizophrenic' existence which has ultimately led to an anarchy of values and loss of moral
direction."(38) These sentiments may sound stretched or homiletical. But they are taken
seriously indeed by critics of Lanka's educational system and by those who voice the opinion
(not unreasonably) that traditional customs and beliefs cherished by a people cannot be
ignored or roughly superseded when it comes to planning a developmental strategy. In an
oblique perspective, Lakshman Jayatilleke (former chairman of the National Education
Commission) has remarked that there will always be a demand for higher education
stemming from perceptions of the role of this education in the socioeconomic structure of the
country, to say nothing of employment prospects. Notwithstanding this appeal, Jayatilleke
argues that the current lowering of the status (and even quality) of the degrees is not at all a
bad thing because at the same time it helps undermine the leftover British elitism that was
built into the universities in the first place.(39) "Nationalism" (however defined) and
education are going to continue to be major issues in Sri Lanka for the immediate future.

This leads, however, to a fourth point concerning the practical emphases of Lanka's higher
education programs. Granted that at least to some degree the humanities are important for the
protection of the national and cultural traditions, and that along with the sciences, these
traditional foci of undergraduate education teach analytical skills useful to the marketplace
and living generally. Cultural critics of the system such as Jayatilleke aside, however, every
recent commission or hearing on higher education has urged a complete overhaul of
university education to make it more development oriented, "to fit graduates into a
developing society especially by enhancing chances of employment."(40) As it stands now
the demand for those who complete university undergraduate programs in the private sector
is, by one recent report's estimation, "virtually negligible."(41) Clearly there is a demand for
more colleges of applied arts and technology (with programs associated with such practical
subjects as entrepreneurship, tourism, accounting, banking, food science and gemology). In
this regard, it should be noted that there are already at least twenty-five technical colleges
with an enrollment of 22,500 students under the Ministry of Higher Education, as well as
hundreds of smaller institutions and agencies operating under other government ministries,
nongovernmental organizations and private organizations. Whether the traditional panache
associated with an undergraduate university degree will be able to compete with this new
emphasis on the practical remains to be seen but, unfortunately for the cultural nationalists,
there appears little likelihood that the use of the English language is going to be diminished in
the business life and economic development of the nation. That is a challenge that will
continue to strain the well-being of the universities, but is less likely to affect the technical
and applied technology institutions, where willingness to accept English is more apparent.

A fifth and final point concerns the truly serious lack of financial resources for higher
education. Perhaps many of the problems already identified with student radicalism and hard-
line attitudes would have been much less deadly if the infrastructure of the universities had
been able to accommodate the flood of aspiring students. But there was never enough funding
to meet the real needs.

All aspects of university education have been wholly financed by the state since 1945.
Although education as a whole accounts for about 7 percent of the annual government
budget, less than 1 percent of this goes to universities.(42) Government funding is
unpredictable and depends on the changing fortunes of the economy. It is not likely that it
will be further strengthened, given the constraints of the civil war. Fees bring in only nominal
revenue, and 50 percent of the students have the Mahapola state scholarship, which covers
tuition and many other expenses as well. But as Indraratna points out, real expenditure on
university education has remained stagnant at a time when the need for skilled graduates has
increased and the effects of a noticeable "brain drain" continue unabated. The private sector,
importantly, plays almost no role in funding higher education or in helping with the
introduction of such needs as management courses.(43) Perhaps the private sector knows that
even the slightest trace of elitism, identified by its support, could spark trouble. So far, with
the exception of one small but interesting outreach by the Aitken Spence group at the
University of Colombo, there is no move by industry to become involved with the national
universities.(44) Fund-raising is also virtually unknown, although a recent appeal by the
University of Peradeniya on its Golden Jubilee is at least a start.

Any country must look to its educational system to do a number of things such as to build an
informed middle class able to handle challenges that arise from ethnic, political and economic
conditions of modernity; provide skilled members of the professions; and protect its legacy of
history, culture and religion with men and women educated in its deepest values. In all of
these matters the Sri Lankan universities are failing. Three recent state commissions that in
one way or another have identified the major problems at hand show that the government is
very much aware of the need to change many of its previous educational strategies if there is
to be peace and growth. They also know that Sri Lanka has many advantages a newly
industrialized country might want, notably a high general literacy rate and a favored
geographical location. Of all the issues that need resolution, however, the one that is most
pressing is the gap in the quality of secondary school programs offered in the cities and in the
economically backward districts. Students entering the university system from rural or urban
background should feel equally welcome and equally prepared - and this includes good
access to the English language (no matter how distasteful this may be to patriots). Otherwise
there will continue to be an ongoing class struggle that will feed the fervent grip of the JVP
redux.
There are several points of conclusion. I have argued that what is now transpiring in the
southern or Sinhalese universities of Sri Lanka reflects the dilemmas confronting society and
the nation as a whole. The universities have been forced to accept very different admissions
standards and programs - and to do so relatively quickly - in order to reduce the always-
simmering resentment of a whole stratum of society that has been demanding (and will
continue to demand) access to improved economic and political opportunity. This is
essentially a class phenomenon - and ultimately amounts to money. It also includes some
aspects of a caste struggle, as large rural castes such as the Batgama and the Wahumpura
repudiate traditional attitudes which continue, however indirectly, to hinder social mobility.
(45) They no longer accept their low-status fate.

But important as these dimensions are to the consequent restlessness of the universities, they
too have to be seen as part of an even larger phenomenon, the ongoing identity crisis that
continues to affect the Sinhalese as an entire ethnic community. This issue shows few signs of
resolving itself. It has many facets, notably a Sinhalese culture that has not easily adapted
itself to modernization, a heightened and dangerous sense that the culture has somehow been
insulted by the events of the last few decades, and subsequent periodic returns to an
exclusivist Sinhalese Kulturkampf that has directly precipitated one of the world's most
trenchant and appalling ethnic civil wars.

Sri Lanka is not alone in having experienced the destabilizing effects of modernization,
however defined.(46) In the case of the Sinhalese, many "patriots" aver that the cultural
tradition has in particular been wounded by Westernization and the pressure to impose
Western political solutions to its ethnic and social problems. Deep-seated cultural time-lines
have led to the "beatification" of that culture.(47) Nowhere was this expressed more
deliberately than in the 1956 Report of the Buddhist Commission and the subsequent
publication of D. C. Vijayawardhana's classic study Dharma Vijaya (published in English as
The Revolt in the Temple) on the eve of the Buddha Jayanti or 2500th anniversary of the
Buddha's enlightenment.(48) This widely circulated book exhibits some of the "antirational"
political sentiments that Scott Newton has identified as descriptive of an entrenched
Sinhalese attitude and world view. Such an attitude continues to make its primary appeal to
raw emotion. It is absolutist, ethnically totalitarian, receptive to violence. It also cunningly
assumes the guise of a rational argument. Further, it is not just special interest groups like the
JVP that are undergirded by this attitude, but more or less the whole of society, including its
polity and "political process." This in turn encourages or brings forward an aggressive,
defiant yet curiously aggrieved ethnic posture, a "hair-trigger sensitivity . . . ready to take
umbrage at the blink of any eye."(49)

It would be an overgeneralization to claim that all the Sinhalese reflect this world view when
clearly many do not. At the same time, enough do (including politicians from all the main
parties who realize that this is the key to electoral success) to warrant emphasizing its
existence at all levels of society. Here there is no sense of restructuring the state to meet new
political needs but a stepping back, a return to traditionalism - hardly the tools needed for the
success of a modern nation state.

Tradition and culture are, as Edward Shils has pointed out, indispensable to human society.
(50) The "weight of the past" is inevitable and possibly desirable. But these aspects of
identity become agitated, problematic and even malignant when they are under threat or when
the culture they represent appears to be dying. It is a well-known fact that many Sinhalese
reflect a self-consciousness of the perceived impending loss of their culture, if not to
Westernization then to an assimilative, hegemonic India. As elsewhere in the world, when
these conditions ripen in the minds of the believers, they become explosive and lead to wars
of cultural and territorial claims, to secessionism and "ethnic cleansing." Robert Kaplan is
surely correct when he notes that "future wars will be those of communal survival aggravated
by environmental scarcity."(51) Sri Lanka shares this dilemma. Sinhalese civilization has not
been particularly well served by its elected guardians, the politicians, or by its moral
guardians, the Buddhist clergy. Both have aimed, knowingly or unknowingly, to fashion a
country without fully including the country's energetic and resourceful Tamil minority. Both
have relied too much on cultural fear-mongering and cultural hubris. The double tragedy is
that while the country is in the process of what appears to be virtually inevitable
fragmentation because of this, the Sinhalese majority itself has not been able to address its
problems of class division and revolt against the status quo. One result is clearly visible in the
nation's universities, which seethe with all kinds of resentment, envy and conflict.

It is too soon to forecast what may come of Sri Lanka's many crises. No one can securely
predict an outcome where so many dimensions of strain are as yet unresolved.
Notwithstanding this, it is appropriate to assume that a fierce Sinhala cultural reactionism will
continue for years to come, fuelling the fires of internal social distress. The election of a new
parliament and government in August 1994 gives some hope, but in fact there are few signs
to indicate that radicalism is in decline. To paraphrase Hegel, the owl of Minerva takes her
flight at dusk. In other words, wisdom comes only after events have run their course. In this
matter, Sri Lanka is still at blazing noon.

Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada, September 1994

1 There are nine national universities in Sri Lanka and many other tertiary-level institutes and
colleges. This paper is largely concerned with issues that pertain to the seven universities in
the Sinhalese south. The Eastern University (Batticaloa) and the University in Jaffna (in the
east and north of Sri Lanka respectively) are only incidentally referred to.

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, which provided support for this paper.

2 E. R. Sararthchchandra, "Crisis in the Universities," Convocation Address, University of

Peradeniya, 1982. Published in the University of Ceylon/University of Peradeniya Review,
Golden Jubilee Souvenir, 1992, p. 125.

3 There are several excellent accounts of the educational history of Sri Lanka. Those that
focus particularly on the universities are K. M. de Silva, "The Universities and the
Government in Sri Lanka," Minerva (Summer 1978), p. 257; A. D. V. de S. Indraratna,
Economics of Higher Education in Sri Lanka (Delhi: Navrang, 1992); B. K. Sanyal et al.,
University Education and Graduate Employment in Sri Lanka (Colombo: Marga-UNESCO,
1983) (hereafter the Marga-UNESCO 1983 Report).

4 On "consociationalism" as a major factor in the political life of the country see A. J. Wilson,
The Break-up of Sri Lanka: the Sinhala-Tamil Conflict (Honolulu: University of Hawaii,
1988), p. 16.

5 See K. M. de Silva, "The Sri Lankan Universities from 1977 to 1990: Recovery, Stability
and the Descent to Crisis," Minerva (Summer 1990), pp. 158, 165.
6 Indraratna, Economics, p. 13.

7 K. M. de Silva, "Universities" (1990), p. 167.

8 Jaffna in particular had a century-long history of educational success. American Baptist

missionaries were instrumental in establishing good facilities, which the Ceylon Tamils were
quick to take advantage of. Tamils were well placed when admission to university was based
only on merit. In 1970, Tamil students had between 35 percent and 45 percent of the places in
engineering, medicine, veterinary medicine and dentistry, although the Tamils (both
Ceylonese and Indian) made up only 18 percent of the population. See also C. R. de Silva and
Daya de Silva, Education in Sri Lanka, 1948-1986: An Analysis of the Structure and a
Critical Survey of the Literature (Delhi: Navrang, 1990), p. 45.

9 Indraratna, Economics, p. 51.

10 For the raison d'etre of the quota system see the First Report of the National Education
Commission, 1992 (Sessional Paper V), p. 31: "The Provinces and Districts are not similarly
endowed. These differ in material resources and cultural traditions. These differences have a
direct and indirect bearing on how the education system functions." (For example, a
composite index shows the overall proficiency in high-school mathematics, science and
English in Colombo to be 57.3, but in Moneragala, only 42.5.)

11 K. M. de Silva, "Universities" (1990), p. 195.

12 See Indraratna, Economics, p. 15.

13 The North Colombo Medical College was established by private means and initiative to
accommodate highly qualified students, some of whom could not gain admission to the
national universities because of the three-tier quota system. The college was not a particularly
controversial subject at the time of its foundation, but after 1983 it became the target of bitter
criticism by those (representing a variety of interest groups) who argued that the college was
elitist and for the economically privileged. In 1989, it was folded into the Kelaniya University
and its private nature was dissolved.

14 Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into and Report on the Grave and
Unsettled Conditions Prevailing in all the University Campuses in Sri Lanka and to Make
Recommendations with Regard to the Future Functioning of the University Campuses,
Parliamentary Series No. 107, 1987.

15 A. C. S. Hameed in Parliament, 7 March 1989. All agricultural and graduate facilities, as

well as the Open University, resisted closure, as did the Universities of Jaffna and Batticaloa
(despite wartime conditions in those areas of the country - a remarkable testimony to the
Tamil spirit of endurance).

16 A Canadian graduate student, Raymond Sokalski of Winnipeg, lived in Arunachalam Hall,

University of Peradeniya, during these parlous times. He was witness to much atrocity and
the fearful conditions of student life when the university periodically opened, and, by his
intervention, is credited with saving the life of a JVP victim being whipped to death.

17 K. M. de Silva, "Universities" (1990), p. 156.

18 Enrollment statistics can be found in the First Report of the National Education
Commission, p. 79; Indraratna, Economics (for example, p. 138), and the Marga-UNESCO
Report 1983 (for example, p. 142).

19 Indraratna, Economics, p. 30.

20 See First Report of the National Education Commission, p. 77.

21 Report of the Presidential Commission on Youth, Sessional Paper 1, 1990.

22 Indraratna, Economics, p. 41.

23 Report of the Presidential Commission on Youth, p. 33.

24 The ideology of the Jathika Chintanaya is best expressed in Nalin de Silva's Mage Lokya
(Dehiwela: Mudanya, 1992), and Jathiya Sanskritiya Saha Chintanaya (Colombo: Chintana
Parshadaya, 1991). Chintanaya means such things as national ethos, ideology, identity,
thinking, consciousness. The central argument is the somewhat romantic view that to find the
chintanaya one has to go to the village. The Jathika Chintanaya resists the notion of a
"common human culture" (podumanuwa sanskritiya) claiming this is an "imperialist"
(yatatvijitawadhi, or anything foreign) concept being foisted on Sri Lanka as Western culture.
Nalin de Silva, incidentally, is not quite the Sinhalese chauvinist he is sometimes purported to
be. In fact he claims respect for the Tamil aspect of Sri Lankan civilization. But he does reject
a perceived Western monopoly of science and argues that the Sinhala "world-view" (loka
dristiya) can engage the disciplines of, for example, science, from its own unique perspective.
Personal interview, 13 June 1992.

25 Marga-UNESCO Report 1983, p. 194.

26 Chitra Ranawaka, "English Learning: Report on the Teaching and Study of English in Sri
Lanka," 1992 (unpublished manuscript, National Education Commission).

27 Marga-UNESCO Report 1983, p. 238.

28 G. L. Pieris, Vice-Chancellor, University of Colombo, Island, 14 June 1992. The

government has set aside only Rs. 70 million for distribution over a period of three years, to
be shared by all the universities, for improvement in university residential facilities.

29 See Manori Wijisekera, Island, 14 June 1992.

30 See D. C. H. Senarath, Island, 28 April 1993.

31 Report of the Presidential Commission on Youth, p. 8f.

32 Personal interview, 20 March 1993.

33 D. C. H. Senarath, Island, 28 April 1993.

34 For a discussion of the relationships between the government and the university student
unions, see C. R. de Silva and D. de Silva, Education in Sri Lanka, p. 46.
35 Marga-UNESCO Report 1983, p. 6.

36 E. R. Sarathchchandra, "Crisis in the Universities," p. 125.

37 Report of the Presidential Commission on Youth, p. 94.

38 Ibid.

39 Personal interview, 3 March 1993.

40 Marga-UNESCO Report 1983, p. 302.

41 Ibid., p. 339.

42 Indraratna, Economics, p. 68f.

43 See Marga-UNESCO Report 1983, p. 318.

44 The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce is apparently in the process of linking up about forty-
five commercial companies with the university. Through this "Friends and Guide Scheme,"
the Aitken Spence Group already fully supports five University of Colombo students.

45 Sinhalese castes which might be considered "low" make up about thirty-five percent of
society. See Bryce Ryan, Caste in Ceylon (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1953), p. 50; Janice Jiggins, Caste and Family in the Politics of the Sinhalese, 1947-1976
(Colombo: K. V. G. de Silva, 1979), p. 35.

46 In Asia, it is not just a matter of technological modernization but, as R. N. Bellah has put
it, there is concern also with the "modernization of the soul," a process far more difficult to
describe than the other forms and levels of modernization. See R. N. Bellah, Religion and
Progress in Modern Asia (New York: Free Press, 1965), p. 196, and R. L. Rubenstein,
Modernization: the Humanist Response to its Promise and Problems (Washington: Paragon,
1982), p. 341. There are some who maintain that "modernization" is quite compatible with
tradition, culture and religious life (e.g., Mary Douglas, "The Effects of Modernization on
Religious Change," Daedalus, vol. 3, no. 1 (1982), p. 8; Lucien Pye, Asian Power and Politics
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 10.) Others disagree (e.g., R. N. Bellah: "It
is clear that the traditional value systems operating in Asia pose a much more important
problem in the modernizing process than had ever been anticipated by most of those
modernizers," Religion and Progress, p. xv.)

47 On cultural "time-lines" as "strata of human experience never totally forgotten . . . often

still raw at the surface," see William Pfaff, "The Absence of Empire," New Yorker, 10 August
1992. See also Steven Kemper, who rightly observes "for most Sinhalese, they and their
ancestors occupy a common estate," The Presence of the Past (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1991), p. 12.

48 D. C. Vijayawardhana, The Revolt in the Temple (Colombo: Sinhala Publications, 1956).

The "revolt was the Buddha's purging of Hinduism, popularly represented by superstition,
theism and exploitation" (p. 572).
49 S. Newton, "Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism and the Politics of the Anti-Rational,"
Thatched Patio, vol. 15, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, August 1987.

50 E. Shils, Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 1.

51 R. Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," The Atlantic Monthly (February 1994), p. 74.

Abstract:

Sri Lanka's higher education is in a state of deterioration. Neglected and underfunded by the
government, Sri Lankan universities nurture sentiments of dissent and unrest among students.
These educational institutions are also plagued by other problems such as admission backlog,
lack of discipline and detached faculty. If this dismal trend in the educational system
continues, Sri Lanka cannot expect to transform itself into a newly industrialized country. It
will need trained and responsible professionals to achieve such goal.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Matthews, Bruce. "University education in Sri Lanka in context: consequences of
deteriorating standards." Pacific Affairs 68.1 (1995): 77+. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Feb.
2015.
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