• Having a ‘university’ with a military structure coming under the remit of the UGC while retaining its essentially military character, amounts to the UGC administering militarised education, and the military being authorised to make inroads into civilian education

The Kotelawala National Defence University (KNDU) Bill is wrecking serious havoc in Sri Lanka’s educational landscape. Students and teachers unionised or otherwise, seem to have reached a rare consensus about its undesirability, though perhaps for varying reasons. The bill’s ridiculously obvious militarisation drive is what has attracted the most criticism, and for good reason. However, my intention here is to highlight it’s subtler – and perhaps more enduring – implications for privatisation, and demonstrate how privatisation is also intrinsically connected to militarisation, thus doubly intensifying the present crisis in higher education. 

The ‘what’

To put it in a nutshell, the bill proposes expanding the reach of KNDU to encompass civilian students. What this means is that the military style of command and control prevalent within the establishment, which is justified for a purely military academy, will govern the conduct of civilian students enrolling for degrees as well. By extension, the knowledge imparted to them will also be within this frame, largely devoid of critical reflection which is the hallmark of any meaningful university education.

Another point of contention is that the UGC exercises no authority over the civilian component of this proposed expansion. This is currently being sought to be rectified by amending Section 23 of the Universities Act authorising the Education Minister to “establish a University for a specific purpose” in consultation with the UGC. This does not quite do the job, however. Having a ‘university’ with a military structure coming under the remit of the UGC while retaining its essentially military character, amounts to the UGC administering militarised education, and the military being authorised to make inroads into civilian education.

The elephant in the room

What I see here is the government attempting to force through privatisation and corporatisation of education, firstly through militarisation, which would later dissuade resistance when attempted on a larger scale. As Myanmar and Pakistan illustrate, there is a strong synergy between militarisation and neo-liberal reform because the former tends to afford the kind of political stability that the latter requires, in a way that democracy cannot quite manage. Privatisation and militarisation are therefore two sides of the same coin.

Privatisation is sometimes lauded as introducing a competitive edge that will make everybody ‘up their game’, including, in this instance, state universities. Let me first acknowledge that state universities are indeed in need of such ‘upping’. However, the way to go about this is by increasing state investment in higher education, rather than pitching the latter against a host of institutions functioning on the profit motive and market logic, whose benefits are accrued individually, rather than collectively, and so cannot be compared with free education and its commitment to social benefits. 

Taking a look at the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s health sector, post-privatisation maybe instructive in this regard. Many doctors tend to view patients more as clients than those in need of medical attention, whose treatment largely depends on how much they can spend. The quality of the medicine prescribed, the type of tests administered, and therefore ultimately the nature of the treatment one gets correspond more to their spending capacity than the actual diagnosis. The free market logic of ‘money for goods’ does not quite work in fields like health (or education), whose yields are more social than economic, and therefore cannot be reduced to mere commodities.

Education in Sri Lanka seems well on its way there, with privatisation having become a daily reality. The more readily recognised forms of it are international schools and private degree awarding institutes. Fee levying courses (including external degree programmes) offered by state universities bear testimony to how the process is in slow but steady motion within institutions committed to free education, that are finally succumbing to the pressures of an advancing market. An even subtler form of privatisation in education is the pervasive tradition of tuition classes, and now – more overtly – online education, both of which are symptomatic of the privatisation (through monetisation) of the means of access to supposedly ‘free’ education.   

In this context, holding institutions accountable for the upholding of collective moral-ethical commitments is gradually being edged out of people’s minds and rationales. Therefore, making rights claims on the institutions of the state, as well as asking questions about the decisions taken therein is becoming less and less of a practice. This spread of what is best termed ‘neo-liberal apathy’ has made conditions perfectly conducive for the government to do business as it pleases.

This is why it has become possible for the government to loan out a staggering Rs. 36 billion through two state banks (National Savings Bank and Bank of Ceylon) amidst a raging pandemic and a crumbling economy both of which need serious financial attention, with no questions asked. Funds from public banks being given out (even as loans) in the midst of such dire financial need not only reflects the priorities of the government, but also signals its strategy of gradually dismantling free education.  

Implications

The KNDU bill erodes into free education in both spirit and provision. In spirit, it is inimical to the ‘freeness’ of free education, when understood primarily in terms of ‘free thinking’. It restricts creative freedom and critical reflection by discouraging questioning, as the oft cited ‘guidebook for day scholars’ rather bluntly states. Freedom of thought and conscience are completely jettisoned in the tight control exercised over thought and action in the military model. 

In provision, it is an attack on the ‘free access’ aspect of free education through systematic underfunding of state-sponsored education, and endorsement of profit-making entities financially and otherwise. The radical egalitarian intervention that free education constitutes has made it possible for many to transition into much more favourable circumstances in life. Dismantling this system will consolidate power and prospects for good life opportunities in the hands of a few who can afford to spend.

The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Peradeniya.