With a drastically-reducing trend of funds being released to the higher education sector over the years, experts question the feasibility of Budget 2024’s ‘ambitious’ plans to provide a university education to every child who passes their Advanced Level (A/L) examinations.
RTI finds drastic decreases
A Right to Information (RTI) request filed by educationists Dr. Kaushalya Perera, Prof. Sumathy Sivamohan, and Prof. Shamala Kumar has found that the amount of recurrent and capital funds released to universities from 2019 to 2022 had seen a drastic decrease, raising concerns about the prioritisation of the education sector’s needs in the midst of an economic crisis.
The RTI found that although Rs. 705,000,000 was released to the University of Colombo as capital expenditure in 2019, this amount had reduced to Rs. 126,500,000 by 2022. Similarly, the University of Peradeniya received a capital expenditure of Rs. 785,000,000 in 2019, which had reduced to Rs. 235,000,000 by 2022.
“Capital expenditure is funds granted to new things like buildings. Recurrent expenditure usually covers factors like maintenance, services, and salaries. If you look at newly-established universities such as the Eastern University, it is only getting a tiny amount of funds. The Open University is getting the least amount of funds,” Dr. Perera told The Sunday Morning.
The RTI shows that the Open University was only released Rs. 15,000,000 of capital expenditure in 2022 while in 2023, the university had not been allocated any funds at all for its capital expenditure.
“Basically, they have been asking the Open University to manage on its own. Even though the Open University was supposed to be for any student to get an open and distance-learning education for free or at a subsidised amount, this makes it prohibitively expensive for those students,” said Dr. Perera.
Higher education for all?
Despite these startling reductions of expenditure being released to the already-existing State universities, during the 2024 Budget speech to Parliament last week, President Ranil Wickremesinghe said: “We will provide the opportunity to obtain higher education without delay to every child who passes A/Ls.”
In light of this initiative, the Budget proposed that four new universities (Seethawaka Science and Technology University, Kurunegala Technology University under the Kotelawala Defence University, Management and Technology University, and International University on Climate Change) be established, in consideration of the current trends for the technical sector.
“I don’t think this proposal is possible at all, given the present situation. Right now, State universities handle nearly 50% of the students who are termed as ‘qualified’ for university entrance. No one questions what ‘qualified’ means – it means that you have just passed A/Ls. That is something we need to question as well; a) What does qualified mean? and b) Does that mean only those who pass A/Ls? Of course, we can also say that every student who passes A/Ls deserves to have higher education. But right now, from that number, close to 50% are coming into local universities.
“However, over the last few years, if you look at the finances, capital allocation for universities has really reduced. Our RTI shows that for each university, allocations have come down by at least two-thirds. That’s not enough to run the existing universities, and therefore, I don’t see how any university is supposed to handle the entire lot of students who pass A/Ls.”
Thus, Dr. Perera questioned whether this proposal was a “fever dream” given the current situation: “It is possible, I think, if we plan for it. I don’t think it’s a bad proposition. It’s just that it reads like a fever dream to think that it is possible in the middle of a crisis, when the education sector has been severely undercut. We would need to double the funds released to the universities, at the very least.”
Meanwhile, speaking to The Sunday Morning, National People’s Power MP Dr. Harini Amarasuriya pointed out that higher education did not necessarily have to be universities, and that it was a “wrong notion” to think so.
“What really needs to happen is the creation of a pathway for kids from school to enter a career that can be academic, professional, or vocational. Those are options that have to be available and they need to be introduced at the school level. This is a simplistic, superficial remark President Wickremesinghe is making, which will not materialise and is not what we should be aiming for. We should be aiming for every child to be schooled with a clear path ahead so that they complete their education with a set of skills in their chosen careers,” said Dr. Amarasuriya.
Need of the hour
Both Dr. Amarasuriya and Dr. Perera also commented on a number of other issues faced by the State university system, including brain drain and a lack of resources.
“The issue is not the lack of new universities, but the serious problems with the existing universities. There are many new faculties which do not have the infrastructure facilities or human resources to do what they need to be doing. It’s a failure to understand the current needs of the system.
“For example, there are technological and medical faculties which are struggling. We are in the midst of an economic crisis – this is not the time to be setting up new universities, this is the time to be investing in the existing infrastructure to make sure that what we have right now is delivering in the best way possible,” said Dr. Amarasuriya.
Dr. Perera said that a massive brain drain was also affecting the system, even as the University Grants Commission (UGC) was not being allowed to hire new recruits to sustain the system. “The people who have left the university system are the ones with postgraduate qualifications. It means that in our local university system, people who have become qualified, despite the bad reputation, have been able to find jobs in other countries.”
Moreover, the President also proposed that four private higher education institutes (NSBM, SLIIT, Horizon Campus, and Royal Institute) be converted into universities, and that Provincial Councils be empowered to establish universities.
“These are all interesting ideas which would take at least 10 years to materialise. I also don’t know how the private institutions will react to the proposals,” said Dr. Perera.
Instead, Dr. Perera stressed that the 2024 Budget should have focussed on increasing the salaries of State sector teachers and providing at least one meal a day to school-going children.
“You can’t expect teachers (or anyone) to do their jobs properly if they are not paid well. If we want our younger education to be taught well, we need to be able to hire well-qualified teachers. I also think that our teachers need to be trained better. We hear that the teacher training colleges are severely under-resourced, but nobody talks about it.
“One of the biggest needs of the hour is school meals for public schools. There’s a huge issue of malnutrition – children don’t eat enough, we know that. If I had to pick one thing, I would say one meal a day for a child. Children can’t learn when they’re hungry; it’s just common sense. These are the urgent decisions that need to be implemented. Other things like setting up universities are long-term plans.”
President Wickremesinghe further said that a group of 25 experts had prepared a new national education policy framework which had been “further polished” through the direction of a Cabinet committee, and had subsequently been adopted by the Cabinet: “I would like to inform this House about several key institutions that will be established under these reforms. These are the Higher National Council on Education, National Higher Education Commission, and the National Skills Commission. The detailed information in this regard will be informed to this House by the Minister of Education in the next two weeks.”
When The Sunday Morning contacted State Minister of Higher Education Dr. Suren Raghavan, he said that Cabinet decisions had to be sent to the Legal Department in order to be checked whether they were concurrent with the Constitution, and therefore, the policy-level decisions had been sent to the legal bodies.
“The President’s expression is that these things are happening in the country even with a financial crisis. The details (timeframe, costs, etc.) will be published in the public domain within the first quarter,” he said.