Higher Education State Minister Dr. Suren Raghavan says all graduates coming out of the State universities should be engaged in gainful employment. In a recent interview, State Minister Raghavan also said it was time for a complete overhaul of the university curricula, which had been under discussion for a long time without any concrete result.
The State Minister also said certain university lecturers had told him that due to the prevailing economic situation in the country most university students are forced to give up their education midway in order to seek jobs and look after their families.
He is spot-on when he says that university education content should undergo a radical change. It is due to the university education not being tailored to suit modern day job demands that graduates are unable to fit into jobs that are on offer. This is particularly so with regard to graduates who had passed out from the Arts stream. There were media reports recently that a group of Arts graduates were being employed as conservancy labourers in some educational institutions in the South.
This unfortunate situation has come about due to the fact they are unable to find well paid jobs that are on offer both in public and private sectors due to their inability to fit into nature of the jobs that are available which are mostly to do with technical or computer fields which are alien to Arts subjects that they are versed in. This is where those graduates who had conducted their studies in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields score.
Perhaps, it is for this reason that these students are being targeted by Arts graduates for brutal ragging, out of sheer envy. It is usually the case that those students in the Arts streams in the universities generally hail from depressed classes in remote areas. They thus develop an inferiority complex, which is another reason for these students to feel bitter with society and feeling of unrest.
Their poor knowledge of English (called Kaduwa in university lingo) could also be a contributory factor to their bitterness. They are also easy prey for exploitation by radical political parties for their own ends taking advantage of their depressed backgrounds and bitter feelings towards society.
Hence the need for a thorough overhaul of the existing subject matter in the universities by making them relate to the modern day challenges particularly the existing job demands. This is perhaps why President Ranil Wickremesinghe recently suggested that students in the Arts streams in the universities be made to take up subjects allied to the technical fields in addition to their usual study programmes.
The President also said he planned to build additional universities and create more vocational training institutes in order to give our youth a chance to engage in profitable employment.
In fact, not the just the universities the entire education system from junior level should undergo a radical shift in order to prepare the young to look forward to a better future .If not, the free education system will be of no avail bringing to naught the efforts of Dr. C.W.W Kannangara who created Central and Maha Vidyalayas chiefly to give a place in the sun to vernacular rural youth to come up in life.
In the proposed new setup opportunities should also be provided to cater to the special talents of students who may not be proficient in their book learning. This should cover the fields of sports and arts and crafts. Today, our national cricketers earn much more than the doctors, engineers and other professionals. Needless to say, not all of them have come out with flying colours in their classroom work or their term test reports.
We have also had top international film stars who have broken all income records, who nevertheless had only a smattering of book knowledge. For instance, Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford was a carpenter, the greatest Bond in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series – Sean Connery – was a milkman and the hero in the popular Westerns and the Death Wish franchise, Charles Bronson, was a dish washer. Hence, scope should be provided for all students under the proposed new system to develop their own talents which will one day make them go places.
Meanwhile, the decision taken by Higher Education Minister Dr. Susil Premajayantha to make it compulsory for all those in the school-going age to continue their studies at least up to grade eight (age 13) is indeed a commendable step. This would not only provide all youth at least a basic education but also wean them away from going on the wrong path from the early days of their lives.
It will also reduce the crime rate significantly, since it is well-known that in most instances youth are being exploited by criminal elements to follow in their footsteps. Of course, more schools will have to be built to cater to the demand, not to mention the recruitment of more teachers. But this will not present that much of a problem considering the merits of the whole business.
