A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, August 7, 2017
University is beyond reach of US, UK students
Should Sri Lankan students pay a fraction of their university costs?
by Kumar David-August 5, 2017, 6:27 pm
University education is beyond the reach of middle or working class
families in the US and the UK, so students get by with large education
loans. The average tuition fee at Harvard is $50,000 per year for four
years; add to that living costs, accommodation and books. State
universities cost over $20,000 a year for four years. At a low cost US
community college a two or three year vocational oriented programme will
set a student back about $7,000 per year in tuition fees. Medical
schools are far more expensive. A graduate will begin life with an
average debt of $35,000; the highest may be $200,000. Student debt takes
seven to 20 years to pay off. Many fall behind or walk away from
unbearable debt obligations. The cumulative US student debt burden at
the end of 2016 was $1.4 trillion ($1,400 billion) and widening; it
exceeds by double the outstanding credit card debt ($620 billion). The
number of indebted graduates was 44 million at end 2016.
After adjusting for population, income and prices the situation in the
UK is not much better. At end 2016 outstanding student debt amounted to
GBP 100 billion and is forecast to double in six years – unless a Labour
government is elected soon. The average student in the UK walks out of
university with a higher debt (GBP 32,000) than his American
counterpart’s average of $35,000 (GBP 28,000). By 2011 UK students were
paying 66% of university costs - probably over 70% now - out of their
pockets and from loans. The cap on tuition fees now at GBP 9,000 per
year is set to go higher. The sharp rise in fees was initiated by Tony
Blair in 1998. Blair, a devotee of transplanting mantras of the private
sector into public sector institutions, put an end to low cost higher
education and jacked up fees, which have step by step risen to GBP
9,000.
The Academy in the Marketplace
Most disconcerting is that the university has become a business; Plato
in his Academy would shudder! Not just private for-profit institutions,
but not-for-profit and public (state) universities too have to put money
and success as a business venture before learning, teaching, fashioning
of an all-round person and love of knowledge. The most important
department in university administration is marketing and student
recruitment, whatever name it goes by. Deans and Heads of Department are
under pressure to enrol a sufficient number of fee paying students.
Swarms of slick recruiters are sent out by British and Australian
universities to conduct recruitment jamborees, seminars and the like in
Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia and the Middle East where pools of
eager, not necessarily rich, parents and students are spotted. In Sri
Lanka, the Education Supplements in the Sunday Times advertise colleges
and courses with the same bluster as mobile phone and kitchen appliance
pushers. Foreign students are a prized resource in Britain and Australia
because they are charged much higher fees which helps subsidise a range
of university activities.
You could well ask what is wrong with a university pushing hard to earn
as much money as it can. The answer is not straightforward in an age
where governments are slashing funding and the number of school leavers
eligible to enter tertiary education is increasing. If I recall
correctly, the total number of university students worldwide in the
1960s was two million, now it is about 200 million. Thanks to advances
in society and industry in the post-war period, the polish needed to
break into higher social circles and the skillset essential for
employment has become sophisticated. However, while the costs of
providing higher education have been rising steeply, the contribution by
the state has been edging up only modestly, leaving a large gap to be
bridged by student fees.
As in business and banking, the top rung of university administrators
are not doing badly at all. The salaries of Vice Chancellors in the US,
UK and Australia are well above the inflation trend line and match
rising tuition fee trends. Colleges have provosts or vice-presidents and
departments geared for local and overseas marketing. There are reasons
for the price surge: overpaid business oriented vice-chancellors or
presidents, too many teachers and administrators and luxury dorms. As
part of their marketing strategy, colleges are promising many outside
classroom services; amenities include mental health services,
counselling and recreational centres. It’s an advertising gimmick as in
all salesmanship; convince buyers that they cannot survive without the
inessential.
At some US private colleges 58 percent of each dollar goes to student
and institutional support services, compared with just 42 percent spent
on instruction. On many campuses, expansion of student services has
driven a 30 percent increase the higher education workforce. Students
are shouldering much of these costs as the state cuts back. It’s a
vicious circle with no visible way out in the US, though it may be
possible to cut the Gordian knot in the UK.
Universities in continental Western Europe do not levy tuition fees, or
if they do the fees are small, and for this reason they are free of a
market ethos and the academic atmosphere is healthy. I have read about,
seen documentaries or had personal experiences as teacher or researcher
in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and the 1960s UK. If I may make a
personal statement, time spent in a university free of market place
morality is a pleasure. My colleagues in Hong Kong, US and latter day UK
would enjoy liberation from this bazaar. But the system does not allow
them to ignore raising money for the university kitty.
Should tertiary education be entirely free?
So far I have been negative about high tuition fees, but does that mean
entirely free education, as we have got accustomed to in Lanka, is a
good thing? Certainly free education, from the 1940s, has made high
literacy and a degree of social equivalence across classes and regions,
possible. However from the difficulties created by exorbitant tuition
fees one cannot infer the other extreme, a perpetual 100% free system,
is best. There are to my mind three reasons why a small fee, for example
to recover 10 to 20% of university gross expenses, should be
considered.
The first is that gratis university education has given birth to a
generation of student hooligans who do not value what society gives
them. Hence while I support the principle of allocating 6% of GDP to
education in the long run, a split of 5.5% from the state and 0.5% from
fees may be good. I am persuaded that this will inculcate an
appreciation of the benefits of edification over hooliganism.
The second reason is that we have come a long way from the 1940s and
there is more money in the country now, poverty is much reduced and even
lower middle class families in city and village, and most working class
and peasant parents, can afford a fee of say Rs 36,000 per annum. A
monthly Rs 3,000 is three day’s wages of a casual worker.
Eighty percent of families can come up with the money without
difficulty, and will do so given the high social premium of university
education. Rs 36,000 each from 50,000 students sums to Rs 1.8 billion,
which is 0.15% of GDP (Rs 12 trillion). In round numbers, right now, the
budget allocates about Rs 170 billion, or 1.4% of GDP, to higher
education. I am keeping the 5.5%:0.5% ratio at the back of my mind as a
guideline.
A third reason is that if students pay part of their education costs
they will be more quality conscious and demand better teaching, higher
quality teachers and better facilities. Right now they take anything
dished out to them lying down. I grant that the issue is complicated and
controversial and not easy to resolve.
On a separate note an interesting point is whether not-for-profit yields
a better outcome than for-profit. I know of no comprehensive
comparative study of university education, but there is a very thorough
investigation of the US healthcare industry by Zack Cooper of Yale
University, published in Yale Insights. I quote from "Why Is Healthcare
So Expensive?" of 12 February 2016.
Quote:
"Question: Are there difference between nonprofit and for-profit hospitals in terms of their prices?
Answer: We found, consistent with the wider literature that
not-for-profits behave identically to for-profits. That is, their prices
are equally high, and they are also likely to charge higher prices when
they have monopolies. Given that nonprofit hospitals receive $30
billion annually in subsidies in the form of tax exemption, I think we
have to ask tough questions about whether or not we should be giving
not-for-profit status to these large hospitals".
End Quote.
If the results for the higher education sector are consistent with those
of the healthcare sector this calls for mulling over some
considerations. What if not-for-profit and for-profit are no better than
each other in the end results they achieve, and are equally expensive
once the costs to the state are factored in? Where exactly does this
leave us?