President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s instructions to the University authorities to take up for discussion the draft proposal of the National Education Policy and implement the suggestions contained in it is a clear indication that the country’s education system is to undergo a sea change tailored to cater to the modern demands and challenges. At a meeting to discuss the future plans of the State Ministry of Educational Reforms, Open Universities and Distance Learning at the Presidential Secretariat on Thursday the President observed that the failure to change the present Education system to suit the country, for long years, had caused problems in meeting the demands of the job market of the present day. The President stressed on the need for producing citizens who would be useful to the world and contribute to the country’s economic development and progress. He said Universities should not be institutions that merely handed out degrees but enable such degrees holders to be productive citizens. He urged on the authorities to present a whole new curricula that would give priority to practical needs.
Earlier too President Rajapaksa issued a directive to the country's University hierarchy to design curricula in line with the local and international job market demands. One recalls President Rajapaksa on one of his campaign stops in a village being told by a young girl that even though she was a graduate, her application of a job had not elicited a response. Giving her a patient hearing the President wanted to know in which subjects had she graduated. When told it was in Political Science the President was prompt in telling her that she would have stood a better chance if her subjects were allied to the technical field.
This just about sums up the predicament of our graduates whom, we keep on producing in armies but are not employable and misfits in terms of the job market which calls for an urgent reappraisal of the whole education set up in its present form.
Year in and year out our universities keep churning out small armies of graduates who have little prospect of securing employment to match their formal education. This is because their training and knowledge does not precisely match present-day job market needs.
Paradoxically, some of our graduates’ organisations are the first to oppose the private universities that cater to the demands of the modern day job market and, to agitate for their closure. President Rajapaksa has ushered in a refreshing emphasis on technocracy in every sphere of his administration and is a keen promoter of advanced technology for the advancement of the country's economy. He is unlikely to favour any curbs on the burgeoning private higher education sector that is, currently, thriving on the growing demand for technology-savvy personnel.
The President had been re-iterating that present University curricula should be re-oriented to match modern day job demands. He had pointed out that despite years of persistent labour demand in the fields of Medicine, Engineering, Nursing and Information Technology, the University system has so far failed to meet this demand in any significant manner.
It was absolutely necessary, he said, to consider this aspect when formulating policies connected to tertiary education in the future. He suggested the addition of Information Technology as a subject for Arts degrees. The Arts stream in our Universities not only continues to produce unemployable graduates but also is a fertile breeding ground for unrest in the universities.
A study carried out sometime ago revealed that many students in the arts faculties came from more disadvantaged social backgrounds with a chip on their shoulders and, were often the main force behind the brutalized ‘ragging’ culture in our Universities. Hence, the change suggested by the President to the curriculum of the Arts stream, would, hopefully, divert the energies of this segment of students to productive pursuits that would benefit them in the long run.
This is not the first time that the curricula of our universities have come under the microscope. The advent of the liberalized market economy, the surge of development activity and, expansion of the national economy have all brought in their wake a whole new set of opportunities in the employment market with the accent on technology, new skill levels and, whole new sectors of economic life.
This has necessitated a change in both the public and private education sectors.
While the private sector has seized the opportunity offered by the expanded job market to throw up a gamut of new study courses, our State sector’s higher and vocational education system continues to flounder, stuck in somewhat moribund, rigid, curricula which continue to produce cohorts of un-employable graduates.
For far too long the system has been producing graduates who are out of their depth when it comes to applying their book learning to the jobs on offer in the modern day. The products of the Universities all these years have been burning the midnight oil cramming on meaningless notes only to regurgitate them at the exams. This learning by rote must be brought to an end at least where the next generation of university entrants are concerned.
