Education is not merely a commodity - EDITORIAL

Leaders of the government since lately have been claiming that Sri Lanka would be an education hub with plans to establish new universities and to upgrade existing universities in a manner that they can attract foreign students. Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe are in the forefront of them with the former even having included a promise during his Presidential election campaign in 2019 that he would position the country as an education hub in the region.

Despite practical and specific actions towards this being yet to be seen, they have sometimes drawn the interest of leaders of other countries. For instance, Australian Minister of Home Affairs Karen Andrews, during a meeting with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in December 2021 informed that assistance would be provided to Sri Lanka to become the education hub in the region.  

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, soon after assuming office told parliament while presenting a revised budget for 2022 in August last year, that the government would change laws to allow foreign universities to set up branches in the country. Again in December, while speaking during the budget for 2023, he said that US$3 billion goes out of Sri Lanka annually to other countries because Sri Lankan students go abroad for higher education and the country could earn US$ 10 billion in foreign exchange annually by setting up foreign university branches here and attracting students from overseas.

In a practical move, Transport, Highways and Mass Media Minister Bandula Gunawardena, who was on an official visit to Russia and Belarus over the weekend, exchanged views with the university authorities in Russia and Belarus on the possibility of establishing a Transport University in Sri Lanka at the Sri Lanka- German Railway Technical Training Centre in Ratmalana jointly with the Transport Universities in the two countries with a view to attract students from other Asian countries.

In fact, now there is a conducive atmosphere for establishing private universities and branches of foreign universities as the main groups that opposed private higher education facilities, too have toed line of the authorities. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which fought tooth and nail against the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) in 2017 and 2018 told a gathering of corporate sector leaders recently that students must have the choice of private education, though education was the responsibility of the government.  

The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), another group that fought against the SAITM students, even using the state-run hospitals as teaching hospitals, did not protest when its President was appointed last month to an expert committee to identify government hospitals that could provide clinical training to medical students from private medical colleges, such as the General John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) and Lyceum Campus.

Using education as a commodity is not a bad idea, especially given the foreign exchange crisis Sri Lanka is faced with. The loans expected from the IMF and other international, multilateral, bilateral and private creditors would only be a temporary solace to the country, as those loans and the outstanding ones have to be repaid one day by us or by our children. What really would help the country ultimately is what we earn for the country in the short-term and long-term. Yet, education disseminated from a country should be practiced in that country. For instance, if the country is to run a transport university while maintaining the same current transport facilities which has become a nightmare for the millions of ordinary people, it would only be a laughing stock.  

Despite the country having 10 transport ministers including those of the provincial councils till 2017, the transport sector was, and still is in utter chaos. It is a well-known fact that one major reason for the congestion is the absence of a proper, decent public transport service in the country. The poor condition of buses and the indecent behavior of the bus crews have compelled hundreds of thousands of commuters to find alternative means of transportation, increasing the number of vehicles on the roads every day. On the other hand, the private bus drivers’ habit of stopping their buses at every bus halt for a long time further disrupts the smooth flow of traffic. 

Ultimately, the average speed of vehicles in the cities in Sri Lanka had dropped to 12 km per hour by 2014, and the authorities stated in 2017 that traffic congestion in Colombo had become a tedious issue, causing an economic loss of Rs. 1 billion on a daily basis. Besides, millions of man-hours are wasted every day due to the vehicular congestion and the rowdy behavior of employees of majority of private buses. 

Amal Kumarage, a Senior Professor of the Moratuwa University’s Department of Transport and Logistics Management had told a state-owned newspaper in 2017 that “the economic cost of traffic congestion amounts to Rs. 400 billion per annum and this amounts to 10% of the country’s GDP.  Hence, Sri Lanka itself would provide hundreds of case studies for a transport university.