President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who always asserts the application of scientific knowledge, especially the information technology in every aspect of the life of a person as well as every aspect of governance, had on February 11 discussed another similar important issue with those responsible for higher education.

During a discussion with the University Vice-Chancellors and officials of the University Grants Commission (UGC), he stated the present university study course should be updated in line with the local and international job market.

He had stressed this point in his policy statement delivered in Parliament on January 3 as well. In that speech he said:

“Some of the courses taught in universities today are not in consonance with market requirements. In the near future, we intend to introduce short-term courses to equip our university students to meet the needs of the modern job market, which they can opt to attend whilst pursuing their current courses of study. Universities and other higher education institutions should be given more freedom in the enrollment of students and in the restructuring of their syllabi to meet the needs of the marketplace.”

The incompatibility of not only university education but the whole education system with economic trends - local or international – is a well-known fact. And it is well manifested by the hundreds of thousands of youths losing appetite for education halfway through their school education, mainly due to the sense of uncertainty on their future and by another group of youths who are stranded after GCE O/L and A/L choosing to temporary or odd jobs, which they have to keep on changing, throughout their lives so many times, without attempting to pursue tertiary education.

The Vice-Chancellors and the UGC officials must be cognizant of this fact before the President took up the issue with them last week, as this has been a subject matter during so many fora - academic as well as political - for the past several decades. Many leftist politicians especially the leaders of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna have been stressing this point, in their lectures to their rank and file since the 1960s. Hence, it is ironic and in a way pathetic that those who are responsible for education and higher education have ignored this issue for decades and the President had to stress them to change the situation.

Sometimes they might not have acted on this issue thus far not because of ignorance or lack of duty consciousness but on the ground that there is no point in taking action in an environment where everything has been politicized and politicians are not prepared to think about the next generation instead of the next elections. Now they have been given the green light as well as the order by the highest authority in the country to act.

Yet, economic development including the job market is a controversial issue in Sri Lanka where several governments in the past boasted that they developed the country either after developing certain sections of infrastructure haphazardly or just maintaining the existing economy whereas the social indicators of development had shown a dismal picture, after their tenures. Some governments that followed closed economic policies attempted to develop the country by forcing the masses into rural agriculture, without providing at least necessary facilities such as land and irrigation or market facilities.

Sri Lankan economy is one that is dependent on foreign aids and considerably guided by the conditions entailed by those aids - loans and grants. So long as the governments have a vision and a plan to develop an independent economy in par with the global economic trends, it would be difficult for the experts in the education sector, or any sector for that matter, to identify and gauge the future job market and plan the development in their sector accordingly. Otherwise, only short term or haphazard plans could be formulated.
Thus only constant engagements between relevant politicians at the decision-making level in the government and the officials as well as experts who are mindful of an independent economy would enable planning the economic development and well-matched study courses at school level as well as university level.