What does S&T capacity mean for a small developing country such as Sri Lanka? My conversations with distinguished scientist and educator, Prof. Kamini Mendis, helped me develop some working hypotheses for my research and also spew out some ideas for action.
Prof. Kamini Mendis is in town for a short holiday. She is currently the Senior Advisor to the Roll Back Malaria Program at the World Health Organization (WHO). She moved to WHO after an illustrious career as a professor of Parasitology at the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Colombo where she published a record number of papers and graduated over 25 PhDs. I am sure her influence on undergraduate education was equally important.
I did not know Kamini in person but I was familiar with her work through my own research on researchers. As part of my work on a US National Science Foundation funded project on “Best Practices in North-South Collaborations” she was on the top of my list of researchers to interview. I was working off of a database of publications from the Science Citation Index for 1993-2002 with in the address field. That dataset may not cover the full output of researchers in Sri Lanka, but it gives me sufficient information to capture what I call the “top researchers from with the most local impact”.
My working definition of a top researcher is someone who has published 5 or more articles in SCI journals during the period 1993-2002, had more local collaborators than foreign collaborators, and graduated at least 5 local PhDs during that period. I am using the number of PhDs produced as a proxy indicator of other aspects of local capacity building.
My conversations with Kamini reinforced my working hypothesis that for countries such as Sri Lanka where there is hardly an industrial base that can productively absorb advanced know-how, the most valuable output of your research is the ‘people’ you influence through your work. Kamini can look back with pride at her own sphere of influence and see how that sphere continues to expand through the good work done by those she has influenced. (I am not going to list them here since I am still working to identify her mentees and develop some measure of their contributions).
Kamini has done her part in Sri Lanka and now has moved into the international arena. Should she have stayed here and, say, developed a Center of Excellence in Malaria Research for? The more I look at the data and the more I talk to people, the fewer reasons I find to advocate for Centers of Excellence for Sri Lanka. Take Malaria. During the 1993-2002 period, Sri Lanka published 15 papers on Malaria related topics, but then Thailand published 251 papers during the same period. Thailand has about three times the population and twice the GDP as Sri Lanka. These differences do not explain a difference of 15-fold in productivity. I need to look more in detail at Thailand’s Malaria research. But the question is why can’t Sri Lanka develop centers of excellence even when we have capable people.
The more important question is "How else can Sri Lanka develop its capacity to deal with an increasingly knowledge-based/ technology-based world?". Kamini said that there is something about Sri Lankans that makes it difficult to bring them under a system or an organization. But then her coauthorships point to several strong and productive alliances with colleagues from other universities and other research centers. What she probably meant was the inability of the Malaria researchers in Sri Lanka to make a more organized effort.
I prefer to call our inability to organize ourselves as “individualism” and look at the positive side of our “individualism”.
The services sector was the fastest growing sector in Sri Lanka’s economy in 2003 (Central Bank of , Annual Report 2003). Telecommunication services grew at 17%. Telecom sector is essentially a buy-and-install driven sector. The backbone (wired or wireless networks, switches etc) and peripherals (telephones, cell phones) are put together to provide services. What we need for further growth in telecommunications are people who can create jobs using existing technology (Gamage and Samarajiva paper). Similarly for other services such as banking, accounting and healthcare and education.
Instead of looking at research as an organized activity that provides technical know-how to drive a traditional manufacturing economy we should look at research as an individually-driven activity that would continue to enrich a well–spring of analytical and innovative minds that would drive a service economy. In a global environment, the possibilities for growth in services are endless if our people have the right mindset. Right now our economy is partly carried on the shoulders of unskilled women who are taking their services to the Middle East. We need to do more services at a higher skill level from here.
Almost all the 25 or more individuals who were influenced by the top quality research work that was led by Kamini are indeed continuing to enrich the well-spring. In fact, during the last few months I have come to know some of them as committed university teachers who are ready to go the extra mile to make their teaching better. Malaria research in Sri Lanka may be on the downside because of the dwindling number of malaria cases and other reasons, but that does not matter. What matters is that the research that was done has produced a cadre of people who can excel in whatever they do. For a small a country like Sri Lanka, it is the process and people that matter, not institutionalization.
The Presidential awards that were initiated by Professor A Kovoor whereby researchers receive Rs: 100,000, I believe, for each SCI paper, has clearly led to a growth in SCI publications by individual researchers in (Upali Samarajeewa, unpublished work). What we need to do is to take the next step and recognize those who mentor junior colleagues and students (post-graduate and undergraduate).
Incentives are not enough. We need better infrastructure. Reliable and cheaper electricity is a must for anything. We can not also talk about any knowledge-driven activity without reliable and always-on internet for our universities. LEARN network has played its role but it is time for something else. A survey by Thrishantha Nanayakkara on research culture in Sri Lanka is a also source for more ideas for action (The survey and the survey results were on Lacnet.org but not anymore).
What should the Ed forum do next? We have so many options. Our recent seminar on Year-1 Admissions alone pointed us in several directions. Then the President decreed that henceforth all tertiary education institutions shall be reviewed by the government. That’s good, but quality assurance of education is too important to be left to government. In quality assurance in education, typically, government agencies and civil society organizations play complementary roles (more on that later). Therefore, at this point, the Education forum will focus its energies on collecting information and ranking education choices for school leavers, and disseminating the information widely. We have just set up a page on this site called studysrilanka, named after the successful studymalaysia.com venture.
StudySriLanka page is about choices at 16+ for school leavers in Sri Lanka, but we like to think big and think of a day in the future when the studysrilanka site would be the site of choice for school leavers or even secondary school students from across Asia. We have direct flights from now and apparently Chinese students are finding some of our private institutions attractive. Maldivians have been coming here for years. We plan to include secondary schools, colleges and universities–colleges in this context meaning institutions that offer degrees in affiliation with universities.
Right now what you see in StudySriLanka is a data dump with errors and all. Stay with us, tell us about your experiences with any school, college or university, and tell a friend about the page. We’ll continue to refine the data and add more features.
In quality assurance in education, governments or government sanctioned organizations are there to ensure that schools, colleges, and universities adhere to minimum standards. However, the information published by governments tends to be pretty bland and not very useful for parents and students who need comparative information that they can use for decision making. That is why ranking systems have co-evolved with government-sanctioned registration and accreditation systems. In UK, you have Times Good University Guide and Guardian Guide to Universities. In the US, parents have a choice of ranking systems-Best Colleges by US News & World Report, The Princeton Review, The Fiske guide and so on.
Following are some excerpts from a write up I did for Student Times, a new magazine from the creators of Leisure Times that hit the stands last year.
Is Sri Lanka Ready for Rankings in Education?
For school leavers in Sri Lanka , the choices in higher education are no longer limited to the 13,000 or so available places in the public university system. If you are able to pay, there are many other opportunities to pursue a degree or a professional or vocational qualification. Should one try one more time to gain admission to a public sector university? Are the public sector programs really free? What is the cost of lost-time? How do the quality, relevance and the true cost of other opportunities compare?
An effective system of regulation in combination with ranking can give the consumers of education the information they need to answer these questions. Regulation by a government or government recognized body ensures that those educational institutions provide the learner with at least the minimum standards. Rankings allow potential students and their parents to compare and contrast all available opportunities using information collected, collated and analyzed by a third party such as a reputable newspaper. If regulation gives a pass or fail grade, a ranking gives a number score. If regulation is a cake, ranking is the icing. In Sri Lanka and other developing countries, the icing may have to come before the cake, because governmental institutions in these countries are generally are not very competent.
Diplomas and Certificates
In Sri Lanka, the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC) is mandated by legislation to register and monitor all tertiary educational institutions, except those that come under the purview of the University Grants Commission, The Law College, Teacher Training Colleges, and a few other specified institutions. Two-year degree programs or associate degree programs are also under the purview of TVEC although such degrees are not popular in .
Currently, over 1000 institutions that offer diploma or certificate programs are registered with TVEC. Many more remain unregistered. TVEC has adopted the wise policy of using a market approach to regulation. In a market approach, a list of registered institutes and the programs offered by them would be readily available to the consumers allowing the consumer to make informed decisions. The expectation is that student interest in seeking out registered institute would would compel all institutions to register.
The market principle will work only if the consumers get reliable and timely data that are made available in a manner that is convenient to the consumer. So far TVEC has not been able to deliver in this regard. Please take a look at TVEC’s web site (www.tvec.gov.lk) and decide for yourself. Meanwhile, the demand for training continues to increase and the supply is increasing to meet the demand. A government agency that is already behind will not be able to keep up.
Degree Programs
The University Grants Commission (UGC) is responsible for maintaining quality in the degree granting sector. The term ‘University’ is essentially owned by the government of Sri Lanka, since a university can be only created by an act of parliament. An independent institution may be authorized to offer degree programs but can not call itself a university.
UGC is a latecomer to the business of quality assurance. In 2002, the Committee on Quality Assurance, a committee appointed by the UGC, initiated a project to design and implement a quality assurance system for higher education. Review of all institutions is expected to be completed by 2005 and the review of individual degree programs is expected to be completed by 2007. This time table does not include private degree programs. The efficiency and the effectiveness of process is not encouraging. It will interesting to see how UGC complies with the presidential decree, which I am not sure did not come with any additional resources for UGC.
Reviewers for quality assurance are chosen from among the faculty members from the 13 universities and therein lay the problem. Many of our faculty members in the universities do not have the level of post-graduate training. The situation is particularly acute in social sciences, humanities and management fields. Of those faculty members with adequate post-graduate training, not all keep up to date in their subject matter. Degree program reviewers should themselves meet certain quality standards. If you set the bar too high for a qualifying a reviewer, there won’t be sufficient reviewers and the efficiency suffers. If you set the bar too low you lower the validity of the quality assurance.
In addition there is the small-pond problem. Nobody would want to be too hard on another colleague who is in the same small university system The quality assurance process in the higher sector badly needs some sort of external validation.
Transnational Operations
Transnational education is a no mans land, locally here in or globally around the world. Transnational education is service or a trade where the supplier of education is in one country and the receiver is in another country. According to the GATS (General Trades and Services) convention, transnational educational services or any transnational trade or service can operate in one of four modes. In Mode I, education is provided in distance mode. Distance education requires a high-degree of self-motivation and discipline and is suited more for more mature learners. Distance mode is yet to establish it self as a viable mode of higher education for young school leavers for whom the acculturation and socialization process of higher education is just as important as the as the educational experience.
In Mode II, the consumer moves across the border to where there is supply. Although reliable statistics are unavailable, the number of alumni associations such Association of Sri Lankan Graduates of Indian universities or alumni associations of specific universities are becoming established is an indicator of the growth of mode II educational services.
In Mode III, the supplier establishes a commercial presence in the consumer’s country either by establishing a campus or through a partnership with an affiliate. In Mode III a student can study for a foreign degree in his/her home country. In , Mode III or a Mixed Mode is most prevalent. In a mixed mode, a student begins his/her study in Mode III and then convert to Mode II by proceeding to a foreign destination to complete the degree
Mode IV is when persons move across borders to provide services in person. A recent advertisement for a transnational IT degree program stressed the fact that their entire faculty is made of Australian nationals.
Regulation and Ranking of Transnational Educational Services
UNESCO, together with the European Union has developed a draft paper that emphasizes the importance of transparency, accountability and academic standards and specifying that transnational arrangements must comply with national legislation in both receiving and sending countries. An international document is in the works. The implementation of these codes of ethics is of course is up to each country.
In the absence of a national regulatory framework or a local ranking system in the receiving countries, rankings that are meant for national consumption in the supplier’s country are used as credentials in transnational operations. For example, University of Nottingham’s operations in cite the ranking of that parent university as the 9th in the Sunday Times Good University League Tables 2004. Curtin University of Technology in Perth is ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement’s World University Rankings 2004 for as 76th from among a group of 200 universities from around the world. Curtin University has a branch campus in Sarawak, . A Curtin University degree can be completed also by studying full-time at the Sri Lanka Institute for Information Technology.
When a transnational service is offered by a university which is highly ranked in its home location, chances are that the branch campuses or the affiliates also offer a reasonably good education. Problems arise when a university that claims to be ranked in comprehensive universities category for the Midwest region in the or some such obscure category offers a degree program in or when nonexistent universities with non-existing credentials offer their programs here.
The University Grants Commission of India monitors and maintains an up to date list of fake universities. The Ministry of Higher Education in maintains a registry of all higher education institutions against which fake universities can be checked. No such service exists in . Fake universities of inferior quality programs can pose serious problems not only for consumers of education but for employers as well. Even if some students might be happy to have degree in their pockets no matter what quality, it affects the pocketbook of the employer who’ll be paying for bachelor’s degree that does not exist or a degree that is of inferior quality. How do other countries handle transnational education?
Australia is a country which is both a transnational education provider and a receiver. In all overseas providers must also be accredited through the Australian processes. The accreditation process considers the following criteria.
· The standing of the provider in its own system
· The comparability of qualifications and learning outcomes with those offered in ;
· The adequacy of delivery arrangements, including arrangements for oversight of course delivery by the overseas institution;
· The bona fides of any local agent or provider delivering on behalf of the overseas institution;
· The adequacy of safeguards for students if the provider cease to operate in .
In effect, the government in takes responsibility for protecting its consumers.
Malaysia is one of the Asian countries which welcomes transnational higher education operations. The prime Minister himself recently announced that the government will initiate a ranking system starting with ranking of IT programs. If succeeds, it will be perhaps the first country in the world where the government steps into do a regulation and ranking at the same time.
Malaysia’s attempt is laudable. The Malaysian government will most likely start the process and then allow a private or non-governmental organization to carry it on, similar to the way the studymalasia.com Web site was initiated and is now maintained.
In Sri Lanka, it is very unlikely that any government organization will be able to give the leadership that is required for a viable regulatory system for tertiary education. The political environment is too unstable and government institutions are weak. As a result, government agencies have failed to provide a viable system of regulation of post-secondary education. If the present instability continues and the political system cannot provide a consistent and coherent vision that is long-term, the agencies will continue to fail.
In Sri Lanka and other countries with similar political environments, newspapers together with Chambers of Commerce and relevant professional associations and private organizations need to play an active role in monitoring and reporting on education and training programs. A ranking exercise on its own may not be viable financially, unless it can be pegged to other revenue-generating means such as newpapers or magazine sales, or the sale of other education products. Internationals donors too should consider supporting these efforts initially.
According to Lanka Business Online, Sri Lanka Information Communications Technology Association (SLICTA), has begun work on a survey that aims to assess the demand for and the supply of skills in the IT sector. To assess the supply, they are collecting information on the type of skills taught in about 150 training institutions. The information for individual organizations will not be divulged in the final report and the SLICTA survey does not seem to address any quality issues.
Is Sri Lanka ready for rankings?
University rankings are typically based on criteria such as peer evaluation, student entry qualifications, retention and graduation of student, quality of faculty, and facilities and financial resources specific to each location. Score for each criterion is aggregated to give a final score which then is used rank the institutions. As is the case with any indicator that uses measurable criteria and those only, these rankings should be used as a starting point for assessing other qualitative information.
A peer-review score is an important component of a ranking score. Typically every institution ranked will be asked to rate all the other institutions on a given scale of, say, 1-10. In a small country even if a few scores are affected by personal or competitiveness concerns, that can affect the final outcome significantly.
A properly functioning ranking system requires a relatively mature education system where institutions find it in own their interests to report accurate data and rank others reasonably. In , transnational operations and local private initiatives in post-secondary education are relatively new. These new organizations may not be particularly open to disclosing information when they are in their teething stages.
Ranking systems in the US or UK have access to a base of reliable data that is maintained and disseminated in a timely manner by other well established surveys. In the UK, the rankings in the Guardian Guide to Universities are compiled from official information published by public agencies. This includes teaching assessment scores from visits by Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) inspectors to departments during the recent 10 years. Other scores are derived from figures published or provided by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) or by the Higher Education Funding Council. The official data include data on private institutions as well.
In Sri Lanka, we have to be creative and design a simple system that may not be exhaustive in its coverage but captures the essence of the quality of a program. A survey of relevant employers could be an important component for an education system in a small country. Here the small size may be an advantage. The number of employers in a given trade or occupation in a small country can be large enough for collecting sufficiently valid set of data but small enough so as to be manageable.
A University for Uva Wellassa, the 14th university in Sri Lanka’s public university system, was opened on August 7. To the average citizen who pays for these ventures through every purchase he/she makes (except milk powder and LPG, as of yesterday) this is a not so joyous birth of a 14th child to a public university family with 13 other mouths to feed. (One interesting development is the appointment of a non-academic to the Vice-Chancellor position, more on that later).
Our universities are short on everything. Short on resources and short on talent, both academic and managerial. We should be devoting precious public resources to improve quality of existing universities. The University Of Colombo was the only Sri Lankan institution to be included in the year 2000 survey of Asian universities by Asia Week, and that university came a dead last out of a field of 70 contenders. Other newly established universities are universities in name only. Faculties of management and faculties of social science and humanities are the worst off. Only 30% of the faculty members in social science and humanities hold PhDs. Another 47% hold masters level qualifications but close to half of these Masters were obtained in the same institution that they got a BA from. (source: commonwealth Universities Year Books, 2002). This insularity of university faculty might be on the increase. In a university, quality of faculty is everything and exposure to new ideas is essential for quality. Our universities are glorified tutories in this regard.
The government has allocated a Rs; 1 billion for the new university. This additional money come at the expense of other priorities. These are monies that could have used to give incentives to the private sector to train more people for real jobs–apprentice training programs have proven to be effective for placing young trainees in the private sector. These are monies that could have been given to school leavers as vouchers to attend private institutions of their choice. Instead, a dysfunctional government goes around adding more universities to a dysfunctional public university system.
In a comprehensive report on education in Sri Lanka, a World Bank team led by Dr. Harsha Aturupane has used census data and other national data sets to make a convincing argument about priorities in educational spending. (World Bank PDF)
Please look at the data before you pooh pooh the World Bank. The analysis confirms a generally accepted principle. A country in our stage of development should spend its precious tax rupees on upgrading primary and secondary education. In tertiary education, any further investments should come from the private sector, with the government being the facilitator.
Oh well, a new baby is a new baby, and every province in Sri lanka but Uva now has its problem child or two. Wayabma province was the last to get one. Why not UVA.
If there is anything new and interesting about the new university, it is in the selection of the new Vice Chancellor. Mr. Chandra Embuldeniya is the new Vice Chancellor. Mr. Embuldeniya does not have a PhD and he is not from the Sri Lankan academic community, but he has a record of accomplishments as a business executive in quality assurance and information management (His bio can be found at http://www.nccsl.lk/pressreleases/so_231103.pdf.). When I served briefly as the Director General of the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission from 2003-2004, Mr .Embuldeniya was a member of the board. I always looked up to him for sound advice. Although it is painful to witness the advent of another public university the country can ill afford, we should view the appointment of Mr. Embuldeniya as a positive development for the system, and wish the new Vice Chancellor all the best.
Universities have been traditionally run by academics for academics but the institutions have been changing in response to new demands.
Take Oxford University. Dr John Hood was admitted as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford on 5 October 2004. He is the first person in the institution’s 900 year history to be elected to the Vice-Chancellorship from outside the University’s current academic body. The principal policy-making body of the university, the university council is still largely an internal body with only 4 out of the 25 members selected from outside.
In Warwick University, a top research university that started only in 1961, the governing Council has a full membership of 33, a majority of whom are lay members drawn from the professions, business and industry and local authorities, who bring a range of experience and professional expertise to the work of the University.
In the American model, the board of management is entirely made of members from outside the academic community, but the leadership is drawn from the academia. Given the presence of an active market for educational services in the , even the academic administrators often have to be good managers of the services they provide.
In , the 1985 universities act of Sri Lanka allowed for the expansion of the membership of the university council, the executive body and the governing authority, by specifying that Half plus one members of the Council can be appointed by the University Grants Commission from persons outside the academia. The composition of the University Grants Commission is not specified in the Act but all 6 current appointee are academics. For all practical purposes, the university system in Sri lanka is run by academics for academics. A PhD and a professorship and administrative experience in the system is usually required for senior administrative positions.
Judging by the dismal state of affairs in our universities the current operating structure obviously does not work. The UK or US models per se won’t work either. Our public universities operate in a supplier’s market where we have 90,000 or more students knocking on the gates for less than 15,000 places. There is no managed approach to introduce private choices. University faculty and administrators have no incentive for real change because there’ll be students clamoring to enter no matter what the quality of the education is. We’ll have to take advantage of any new opportunity for change. Let us hope that a vice chancellor from outside the system can bring some new ideas. Mr. Embuldeniya, We wish you good Luck .
Sujata Gamage
Coordinator
www.educationforum.lk
A Sri Lankan Geologist, Prof. CB Dissanayake has just been recognized as a leader in research by no less a body than the editorial board of ‘Science’, one of the most prestigious journals in the world. During 2005, Science celebrates the 125th anniversary of the publication of its first issue with a special essay series, inviting researchers from around the world to provide a regional view of the scientific enterprise. The journal has invited Prof. Chandra Dissanyake of the Geology Department in the University of Perdeniya to write the essay for the month of August under the theme Global Voices of Science. His essay is titled "Of Stones and Health: Medical Geology in Sri Lanka ".
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/309/5736/883?etoc
Congratulations to Prof. Dissanayake and his team at the University of Perdeniya. We are proud of you.
It is not often we can say something nice about our universities. These are institutions that can not even keep to an academic calendar. They close at a moments notice and stay closed for indefinite lengths of time. The inability to keep a calendar is a manifestation of many ills of the system and is also the cause many other disfunctionalites of the system. Who is to be blamed? That is another blog for another time. This blog is for praising those who do quality work in the middle of inefficiency, incompetence, lethargy and other assorted ills of others.
According to the Science Citation Index, an index of recognized science journals from around the world, Sri lankan institutions published 1250 items in international journals during the 1993 to 2002 period. Of these publications approximately 70% involve the universities. A notable feature of these publications is that 90% of them fall into one of the following -Clinical Medical Research, Malaria & Filaria, Bioactivity of Natural Products, Natural Resource Studies and Applied Physics. Our faculty seem to succeed in a highly competitive world of global academic publishing by finding the appropriate niches for themselves.
Considering our strengths in both Natural Resource Studies and Clinical Research, Medical Geology has a lot of potential to enthuse young faculty members from across disciplines to do research. Very importantly, this type of interdisciplinary research has a lot of potential for involvement of social science and even management and humanities faculty members. Sri Lanka’s reocord of publications in the social science citation indexed journals is rather poor. During 1999 to 2002, Sri Lanka averaged only 12 publications per year and 50% of all publications originated from the Faculties of Medicine! Collaborations across disciplines can bring about benefits for all concerned.