By Kaushalya Perera
With more interest in the quality of higher education in Sri Lanka than ever before, and with a pandemic forcing far-reaching changes, this is an opportune time to discuss what quality means for university education.
Quality in state universities
Mention quality in higher education and attention inevitably veers to the state universities functioning under the University Grants Commission (UGC). The foremost complaint about graduates of these universities is their ‘unemployability’. Successive governments and the World Bank have, rather simplistically, equated unemployability with low English proficiency and low computer literacy. Unions and educationists have critiqued this argument, and pointed to the lack of state investment in education as a major reason for their weaknesses. However, from the government’s point of view, the ‘employable’ graduate is to be produced not through state funds (education received a mere 2.1% of GDP in 2018), but through
-Strict announcement from FUTA
(Lanka-e-News-07.May.2021, 4.35 PM) In the name of national security, a bill called Kotalawela National Defense University Bill is to be introduced with the aim of militarizing universities and higher education. Explaining its danger, the Federation of University Teachers Associations (FUTA) calls on all faculty, students, civil society and citizens of the country to oppose it. The full text of that announcement as follows.
Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) Statement on Proposed Kotalawela National Defense University Bill
The Federation of University Teachers Associations (FUTA) notes with grave concern the current moves to resurrect the Kotalawela National Defense University (KNDU) Bill. This Bill was first proposed in 2018 and the Sri Lankan academic community expressed its strong opposition to the bill at the time. The KNDU bill threatens to fundamentally change the state higher education landscape in the country by creating