University Governance and Management: Is it elitist and alienating students?

July 4, 2018, 10:13 pm 

 Continued From Yestrday

by Dr. Siri Gamage, Australia

to incorporate this element. However, such change requires extra commitments by the academic staff.

Important aspects of a university are the availability of qualified and inspiring teachers, course content and pedagogy suitable for the 21st century, administrators such as Vice Chancellors, Deans, Heads of Department who can provide a congenial environment for learning including infrastructure (e.g. hostels), library facilities, communication in a language that can be understood by students (without jargon), customer friendly internal bureaucracy, internet and lab facilities. The product of teaching and learning which is in this case the degree should also have contemporary relevance in the national and international contexts (To ensure this, universities in developed countries utilise a set of graduate attributes for each degree. Aims of courses, assessment methods and expected outcomes from teaching tally with these graduate attributes).

Funding for Individual Research vs Team Research

What about the research enterprise in universities? Do students get an opportunity to function as research assistants while studying? Does the current funding method of university research encourages team research, for example through the establishment of research networks or centres of excellence- so that the students get more opportunities for working as assistants or is the funding individually based? My understanding is that a research allowance is provided to each academic staff member along with the salary rather than providing competitive research grants to teams of researchers on a competitive basis. There is no harm in introducing some competition in this sphere with the aim of generating innovation and more opportunities for postgraduate students to work as paid research assistants or associates. In countries such as Australia, Canada, and the US when senior academics apply for team based research grants, they can include several post-doctoral positions. Competitive research grants are assessed annually by panels drawn from academia and industry operating within a National Research Council. This way, the government can be assured that the important research funds are spent on worthy projects with national relevance and a potential for innovation.

The point here is that if high performing students are absorbed into various formal roles in the teaching and research processes within universities, it can reduce the feelings of alienation generated by their generalised exclusion from the formal structures.

Significant innovations in research cannot be generated under the existing method of granting a research allowance to academic staff individually with no adequate monitoring mechanism in place. It is a highly inefficient method unless their research output is measured objectively annually. Instead, a method of funding ‘team research’ in identified areas of national priority has to be devised.

Higher Education as a Transformative process

University education has to be a transformative, empowering process for the students. Academics and students should collectively construct knowledge both from the books, journals and experiential knowledge. Students (and their parents) should have confidence in the value of the product they acquire at the end of university education if they are to place trust in the education process, who administers it, and the very process of learning as it is presented today with enormous public expenditure. Instead, what we witness is the lack of trust and lack of perceived value in the process as well as the product i.e. degree, as far as some disciplines are concerned.

Conclusion

This article shows that the existing university governance and management/administration structures and processes appear to exclude student representation creating a generalised feeling of alienation among students. Such alienation can lead to the development of anti-establishment attitudes, student indiscipline and agitation for just and fair decision making and inclusion. If this hypothesis is valid, it shows how our authorities have not learned the lessons from previous episodes of student unrest and activism that led to countrywide violence. Composition of University Governing Councils and Senates reflect the fact that Sri Lanka’s universities have not moved with the times to be inclusive bodies of governance. Instead, they seem to continue as elitist bodies deliberating on matters relating to university management/administration including academically important matters with no direct inputs from the students who are the most important element of a university. For that matter, there do not seem to be a gender balance either in representation, making such bodies highly patriarchal forums. Therefore, University governance and management can be open to charges of being hierarchically organised outfits rather than ones that demonstrate democratic, representative principles (so far as students are concerned) suitable for the 21st century.

Instead of examining the reasons for this situation via formal mechanisms such as a commission of enquiry appointed either by the universities themselves, the ministry of higher education, or formal research, there is a tendency to show who is right and who is wrong in specific matters that have become contentious. In doing so, governments have inclined to maintain the existing governance, management/administrative structures that are heavily biased toward senior professors (serving and retired) in positions of power rather than allocating democratic spaces within decision making processes and structures for students to express their opinions formally and to empower.

No wonder that students have come to the streets to express their opinions and even become politicised in the process given the disempowering nature of university governance and management/administration! As a result, higher education has become a ground for entrenched battles between students and authorities rather than a transformative process for creating better and informed human beings for a socially just society.

If we are to make universities functioning institutions again, recognition of ‘politically’ active students’ status beyond being Daruwo -who have surpassed the stage of childhood and become adults - can be helpful to university administration/management at various levels.

For universities to become places of learning in a harmonious environment, authorities need to treat students as adults who have distinctive identities, viewpoints, and experiences as well as something to contribute. Teaching pedagogy has to change to validate these rather than exclude. While great books from the West and USA are important, teaching has to rely on local intellectual traditions, knowledge and wisdom while doing so. Students who show skills need to be involved in teaching process by offering them formal roles and included in formal decision-making processes. Absorption of academically and professionally promising students to various teaching roles as teaching assistants and tutors in residential facilities is also necessary. Problem solving mechanisms within public institutions including management practices need to be reformed to cater to contemporary needs and aspirations of stake holders instead of disempowering them.

Such reforms have the potential to reduce the temperature within universities.

Providing more autonomy to universities from the political authority to determine their future directions can also contribute to innovation, competition and even diversification.

Concluded