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by taking over Jaffna College and Parameshwara College with no new investment in building and,
adding insult to injury, transferring the rich heritage of books of the Jaffna College library to the
South on the dubious claim that it was all now the property of the unified University of Sri Lanka.
(Some of these were returned when a better sense of fairness prevailed). The opposition to the new
universities was muted by those whose career prospects were enhanced by the proliferation of high
academic offices in the new universities.
National or Parochial Universities?
by Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
The Vision
The University of Ceylon
When the University of Ceylon was established in 1942 under Sir Ivor Jennings, it was modelled on
Oxford, Cambridge and London. It was meant to be world class although its students were
Ceylonese. This is evident from the Universities Act, which clearly lays down that no considerations
of national origin, race or religion may be used to debar a person from employment or admission as
a student to the University. Admission was selective. The teachers were renowned. No one
questioned the national character of the university where English was the medium of instruction.
Erosion of that Vision
The first major inroad came with Swabasha education in 1956. The University somehow managed to
preserve English under the pretext of needing time to change over. Unlike Europe which kept up
Latin while developing its own languages after the Reformation, we seem to have been unable to do
that. For, we dumped English as though it were a dirty thing. The Arts Faculties were the first to fall
victim when by the mid-1960s the switch over to Sinhalese and Tamil was almost complete. With the
last English science medium Advanced Level exam for the 1967 A. Level class (continued up to the
1969 A. Level for that class' third shy) the science stream virtually disappeared except for limited
offering for children of mixed parentage, those who had r eturned from abroad and Muslim students
whose weaning away from Tamil was being encouraged.
The professional faculties like Engineering and Medicine continued to evade the requirements of the
Official Languages Act by asking for time to switch over. This exemption seems almost permanent
now.
However, with the end of the English medium A. Level, the national character of the University could
not be preserved in any way. With the demand for education, there was a natural need to expand
enrolment while keeping up standards. We failed at that by artificially insisting on the same
standards throughout instead of acknowledging the impossibility of it and that the best students
need to be provided with higher levels of learning and that the best teachers must be allowed to drift
to the best universities.
Thus with the proliferation of universities in the 1970s, came the real end. The last nail into the coffin
was when elite English educated Sinhalese for reasons of nationalism upheld the glories of the
ancient methods of education. With that even the ideal model was not upheld before us. The result
was local journals in place of the erudite papers based on international peer review by experts, and
local notes in lieu of well-tested textbooks passed by the eminent editorial boards of international
textbook publishers. While the English educated Sinhalese took great pride in their local creations
that salved their egos, Tamils and ordinary Sinhalese paid the supreme price for their arrogance -
the near-total collapse of the educational system.
There are lessons to be learnt from countries like Singapore that have retained and expanded
English proficiency as a learning tool and yet kept up a healthy interest in their local languages.
Towards Regional Universities
The momentum towards regional universities was now set. While claiming to be teaching in English,
many (if not most) universities teach in Tamil and Sinhalese while foisting so-called English medium
graduates on the market. Even in engineering where most of the teaching is in English, the lab
teaching by Instructors tends to be largely in Swabasha. So inveterate is this farce about English
education that the Department of Production Engineering at Peradeniya has been effectively shut to
Tamils because some of the lectures are in Sinhalese. The availability of one medium of instruction
together with the non-availability of the other made many of these universities communal in
character. Thus, we now have linguistically Tamil and Sinhalese Universities. While all of them make
pretensions to having English medium courses, a recent study on the English proficiency of their
students showed that instruction is unlikely to be in English.
Ethnic Enclaves through Admissions
As Universities proliferated, they were seen as concessions to regionalism. If the Western Province
can have Colombo and the Central Province Peradeniya, then why not Jaffna for the Northern
Province, Rajarata for the North Central Province and so on? The problem was that with limited staff
and resources, the new Universities were inevitably understaffed and under- equipped.
The most egregious and illustrative case of zero-cost new universities was Jaffna which was begun
by taking over Jaffna College and Parameshwara College with no new investment in building and,
adding insult to injury, transferring the rich heritage of books of the Jaffna College library to the
South on the dubious claim that it was all now the property of the unified University of Sri Lanka.
(Some of these were returned when a better sense of fairness prevailed). The opposition to the new
universities was muted by those whose career prospects were enhanced by the proliferation of high
academic offices in the new universities.
But few students wanted to go to these new Universities. If choice was to be exercised by students,
the best would go to the older established universities while the bottom of the barrel would go to the
new ones. At policy-maker level, the thinking seemed to go thus: "If you want your own university,
then support it by sending your sons and daughters there. Unless we send good students, your
University would stand no chance of coming up." Another consideration was the safety of students
during the civil war's most intense period.
Thus, admissions policy ensured that those from Galle went to Ruhuna, those from Northern
Province to Jaffna and so on - with the allowance for the top 10% of science-based students to be
allocated a university of their choice. The inequity of the policy of geographic allocations took a while
to surface. No one asked why an engineering student from Galle should be sent to the new Ruhuna
Engineering Faculty in Hapugala, while someone with much lower performance from Badulla would
go to the superior (at least for now) Engineering Faculty at Peradeniya. It is the classic problem of
individual rights versus community rights. Which is supreme - the right of a student to go to a good
university to which he has earned admission or the right of a community to develop itself by getting
good students to come there?
Implications to Regional Development
This policy of giving a provincial preference in admissions has an implicit tension. If the region is to
develop, it must build its institutions. But until such institutions come to maturity, the people of the
region will be denied admission to the superior universities by being shunted to these badly staffed
and under equipped new universities. This thinking is one dimension that has prevented the people
of the North from pushing ahead with the new Engineering Faculty authorized for Jaffna. It is felt that
students who are at present admitted to University of Peradeniya would be shoved into this new
Faculty that would be formed. The very recent formation of the Law programme at Jaffna, which
hardly has any lawyers of competence on its staff has resulted in Tamils of the North-East, who
would have otherwise been admitted to the mature Law programme in Colombo, being shunted to
the new law programme at Jaffna.
Thus, the UGC is being accused, unfairly, of a vile plot to stop the production of good Tamil lawyers
by starting the Law programme in Jaffna. This seems to have reinforced objections to Jaffna's
Engineering Faculty. The UGC thinking is that unless we go through this difficult beginning phase
where standards would be less than desired, we will never have a good law or engineering faculty in
Jaffna. There is, indeed, something to be said for UGC policy on regional universities. Today,
despite its bitter beginnings, most Tamils acknowledge the University of Jaffna as a positive thing.
Despite all the previous negative criticism, this week's convocation of South Eastern University gave
much pride to the Muslim community and saw political enemies coming together in full attendance. It
proved the soundness of the later Minister Ashraff's vision for his community that overcame, as the
President remarked in her address, the then UGC's reluctance to found the University.
Jaffna Medical Faculty Fiasco
Admissions policy remained undiscussed for long until the Jaffna Medical Faculty hit the headlines.
Muslim students from the southern end of the North-East Province, objected to their being posted to
the University of Jaffna.
Coming from that province, their assignment to Jaffna was natural to UGC officials. Although a few
Sinhalese and Muslim students had been studying in Jaffna for some time now, the latest batch of 25
medical students ordered by the courts to be admitted and were sent to Jaffna by the UGC, alleged
through their MPs that they had been harassed (a fact that a group of these students denied to me
in person). The political machinery went into motion and the UGC was ordered to transfer the 25
students involved to southern universities.
That was done. Now it was technically conceded by the political establishment without even an
inquiry into the allegations of harassment that non-Tamils cannot study in Jaffna.
At this point there are only two ways to go. We may use this as a precedent and say that Jaffna and
Eastern Universities are only for Tamils. It would be to visit the most terrible and unjustified calamity
upon these universities and the people in the North-East by branding these universities as
communal in nature, when, in fact, all the evidence is that the Sinhalese and Muslims in their midst
were treated with courtesy. If at all they faced any hardship such as having to sleep on mats in the
hostel, these were hardships faced by all students regardless of ethnicity. (It is equally a symptom of
starting new universities without funds that Jaffna hostels provide mats while Peradeniya has teak
beds and built-in cupboards. It is a situation that was rectified this year when the UGC doubled the
per-student allocation to Jaffna to bring it to level with the rest of the country). A corollary of
declaring Jaffna as being for Tamils then would be that the other universities are for the Sinhalese.
The concept of universities as ethnic enclaves must be rejected out of hand, if we value them as
places where ideas are unfettered.
Alternative Policy
Alternatively -- and I am convinced that this is the right way -- we must push for regionally located
national universities to meet regional and national imperatives. Admission to each university must be
based on performance alone. This would ensure that universities are multi-ethnic in character and
earn the students they get. Certainly, at the beginning some universities would get poor quality
students. The need to help newer universities to stand up on their own feet can be addressed by
giving them higher grants, special exemptions from salary scales so as to attract staff, higher and
more bursaries to students who go there and so on. Surely, forcing bright students to study in
universities they do not want to be in, is not the way to help universities come up; for it only allows
their staff to be assured of good students whether they, the staff, work or not.
For University of Jaffna and indeed Eastern University, it would mean that their students would be in
proportion to the ethnic mix of the country (tilted a little towards the Tamil population because of the
geographic preferences of students). It would then mean hiring non-Tamils to the staff so as to
service the mixed student population. It further necessitates an apolitical campus culture where all
communities can live in an unthreatening academic environment. To many in these Universities and
those of a separatist bent of mind, these would be anathema.
The alternative, however, is for these universities to go down more and more in academic standards
and be known increasingly as ethnic enclaves where the freedom to think has no standing. The
alternative is to put up with a two- faced fawning culture. Academics come quietly to the South and
ask the President to be made this or that or go to Minister Douglas Devananda and ask to be put on
the University Council. And then they go North to place foundation stones for LTTE monuments on
campus or make blood-curdling speeches or shout "Jai! Jai!" on Great Heroes' Day, or work full-time
in Kilinochchi on government pay, taking no classes. To break out of such an obsequious culture by
itself will foster the independent thinking that ought to be the hallmark of a university and true
academics.