Legislation is needed to restructure

the gatekeepers of higher education

3 March 2017

Two prominent gatekeepers of higher education in Sri Lanka are

the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Sri Lanka
Medical Council (SLMC). They have achieved this status due to an
artificially created scarcity of credentials, or access to credentials,
that they guard.
UGC is the gatekeeper to the free-of-charge higher education
offered by the public sector. These opportunities are limited to
20,000 or so entrants, or 4% of a given youth cohort, in any year.
UGC seemingly does nothing but change the deck chairs on this
public higher education ship as hundreds of thousands of other
youth are left to navigate private options on their own.

Sri Lanka Medical Council or SLMC stands between the medical

graduates and the medical profession on one hand, and the
medical professionals and the general public on the other hand.
Judging by its recent actions, the council guards the interests of
medical professionals to limit the supply of doctors, while
thousands of would-be medical students are struggling to find
alternative educational paths, and patients suffer for lack of
doctors. In contrast, professional bodies representing architects,
engineers and accountants have expanded opportunities for
higher education in their fields offering or facilitating non-State
options.

The Minister for Higher Education in consultation with the UGC is

empowered to give degree awarding status to qualifying
institutions. It should be noted that S.B. Dissanayake, then
Minister for Higher Education, for all his high-handed ways, was
instrumental in following the procedures to open the doors to
South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) and
NSBM as institutes awarding local degrees, increasing local
degree opportunities vastly. UGC has been and continues to be
more or less a bystander when it comes developing the higher
education sector outside of the public university sector.

If UGC has been playing a lethargic role in the higher education

sector in general, the SLMC has been playing an outright
reactionary role, harming the growth of the medical sector. SLMC
granted recognition to the medical degree program at the
Kotelawala Defence University (KDU), literally at the point of a
gun, but has put obstacles to a private initiative by Dr. Neville
Fernando, acquiescing to trade union demands of the doctors.
As the Court of Appeals of Sri Lanka in its court order
CA/WRIT/187/2016 (see: http://www.educationforum.lk/wp-
content/uploads/2005/08/SAITM_ca_writ_187_16_2017.pdf) said,
the Court does not have sufficient evidence to judge whether
SLMC acted mala-fide or in bad faith, but the Court took note of
the fact that SLMC investigators recommendation to not
recognise SAITM graduates does not correspond with their
detailed observations about the program, and that SLMC
investigators have applied two different standards when holding
investigations at SAITM and KDU, respectively.

Why are our higher education gatekeepers acting with duplicity or

failing to serve a larger public interest? My guess is that it is
because they are structured as closed shops and hence destined
to act in self-interest. In this column, I compare UGC and SLMC
with parallel institutions the UK to make the argument that we
urgently need legislation to open up the local counterparts to
positive influences form outside.
Higher Education Commission of England draws talent
from other sectors
 Accountability in higher education presents more
difficulties than primary or secondary education. Universities are
on the top of the credentialing hierarchy in a country. It is
particularly difficult to assess quality in arts and science fields
where there are no counter-balancing professional associations
outside of the academia that could accredit the programs.

An individual faculty member in arts or science may decide the

flavour of a course offered, if not its full content; teach the course;
and set and grade exams. Some forms of moderating or cross-
checking procedures are usually available, but implementation
can vary.

The decision to award a degree is often made within the confines

of a small department. Whether in arts, science or professional
fields it is difficult to judge from outside whether university
teachers are up to date in their knowledge and their teaching is
relevant to the needs of the economy and society.
In the Western world where universities have had a long history
going back to the eleventh century, accountability has been built
on reputations established over long periods of time. Overtime, as
the state began to play a larger role in funding these institutions,
the boards of governance in these institutions have been
constituted to make them more participatory and hence more
accountable and connected to ground realities.

For example, the governing board of the Higher Education

Funding Commission of England (HEFCE) is appointed by the
Minister for Education to include six non-academics or lay
persons in addition to four academics as board members. While
the academic members are those with solid academic credentials,
the non-academic members or lay members have been selected
such that they bring depth and breadth of experience in industries
from healthcare to mining.
UGC of Sri Lanka is an institution for academics by
academics
The public sector is the first choice in higher education for the
average family in Sri Lanka. Private higher education is growing,
but it will not make a dent in the demand for higher education by
these families. Besides being free-of-charge, the public higher
education sector offers a zone of comfort and familiarity for the
average Sri Lankan youth.

Sadly, the public sector has failed to equip their students with the
knowledge and skills necessary to face competition from local
elites for attractive jobs outside of government. One reason for
this failure is that the public university teachers themselves lack
the necessary knowledge and skills.

Most public university teachers try to keep the ugly truths about
our public sector under wraps, but a few dedicated individuals like
Professor Sunethra Weerakoon of Sri Jayewardenepura (See
Institutional and cultural corruption within public universities
http://www.educationforum.lk/wp-
content/uploads/2005/08/USJP_Symposium_2016_Sunethra_E.pdf)
and Dr. Predeep De Silva of Ragama Medical Faculty (See
Lankadeepa, 14 February, p. 4) have taken the initiative to
discuss problems in the open, and provide constructive
suggestions for improvement.

A few dedicated academics can do little unless the regulatory

authorities are structured to bring external actors into the sector.
Currently, the only outside actor in the University Grants
Commission is the ex-officio representative from the Treasury. Six
of the other seven members are all academics who have risen
through the ranks in the public university sector. Dr. Wickrema
Weerasooriya is the only other academic with a broader range of
experiences.
Outsiders constitute 50% of the General Medical Council of
UK
In regard to the regulation of the medical profession in UK, the
countrys General Medical Council is made up of 12 members,
with half of them required to be lay persons or those outside of
the medical profession. The lay persons in the present GMC
include four individuals who have received public decorations of
Dame, Baroness, etc. for services in the public or voluntary
sectors and two others with expertise in finance and actuary,
respectively. The Management team of the GMC also brings
together a wide range management talent, and, notably none
them have medical qualifications. Appointments to the GMC are
not without controversy. According Metro newspaper of UK:

Its just been announced that Charlie Massey will be the next
CEO of the General Medical Council, an independent body set up
to regulate doctors. Massey, however, is currently a director
general at the Department of Health and advisor to Health
Secretary Jeremy Hunt which a lot of medics think is a little too
close for comfort.
Further, in a letter to the British Medical Journal of BMJ, an
individual who is probably a doctor, has raised the issue whether
Charles Massey, the new CEO of GMC has an academic
qualifications and, if not, whether that is appropriate. Though
such concerns are valid, the existence of a balance of academics
and non-academics in the council gives it a balance of political
influences v. professional self-interest.
The 25 members of SLMC

are all doctors!

The 25-member of the council of SLMC is exclusively made up
representatives from medical profession. First, the eight deans of
the seven public medical schools and dean of Faculty of Dentistry
are members. It is probably a good reason why these faculties do
not receive the same scrutiny as faculty of medicine at SAITM.

Of the 10 Members to be elected from the medical professions,

eight of them represent doctors, one represents apothecaries, and
another one represents the dentists. The Director General of
Health, who is also a doctor by convention, serves as an ex-officio
member. The Minister for Health can nominate the six other
members including the Chairman, but all nominations have been
restricted, voluntarily or otherwise, to medical professionals. The
result is a Medical Council which cannot be distinguished from a
trade union of medical professionals and/or the public medical
education monopoly.
(The writer can be reached via sujata@lirneasia.net.)
Posted by Thavam