UNEMPLOYED GRADUATES

by Goolbai Gunasekera

The collective blood pressure of many educationists rises whenever the Press highlights the fact that new graduates in Sri Lanka are protesting publicly that they have no jobs. Truly these graduates look at the world through surreal optics. So let me describe the scenario which has resulted in this sad, bad and quite mad mess which is our educational system these days.

No country in the world gives their students anything like what our ungrateful university students are receiving and have been receiving from all successive Governments. It is a system that is wasteful and unproductive. The introduction of Free Education started the downward slide of standards as it was implemented without too much thought by a PM who was himself not an educated man.

Sociologists warned that the division of students according to language was dangerous in extreme. One of them said, “The Sinhalese and Tamils will be fighting on our doorsteps in 30 years”. Of course he was completely right but by then it was too late to make any corrections.

From Free education in school, things became even more expansive as far as expenses went. Books were free. Free food soon followed. Then before we could catch our breath cloth for free uniforms was being distributed annually. Votes were being bought with educational promises which cost the country dearly. And now new technological and non-academic courses are being introduced at an exorbitant cost to the government.

Added to this lunacy was Free University Education. Energy and understanding were conspicuously absent in subsequent governments as far as Tertiary Education went. The Heads of the Department of Education went tamely along with whatever the sitting Minister decreed. Famous civil servants like Mr. Walwin de Silva or the last Englishman to hold that office, Dr. H.W.. Howes, had long since departed and with them any hope of a sensibly structured system of schools, Principals and teachers.

In the organization of Sri Lanka’s ‘New Education’ thousands of circulars hit the press. Teachers and Principals were categorized into grades based on length of service rather than ability. The better schools of Colombo, which were foolish enough to join the free scheme were not able to replace their outgoing Principals with educationists of their own choosing. They had to accept whoever the Department sent along and recently I had the sad experience of calling the Principal of one of Colombo’s A Grade Girls’ Schools and finding that the Principal spoke no English at all. Chauvinists will probably say she did not need English since Sinhala is the National Language.

The downgrading of education began gradually but it continued remorselessly. The University of Peradeniya, one of the most beautiful in South East Asia, is now a mere travesty of what it was when Sir Ivor Jennings proudly showed its lovely buildings to new entrants 65 years ago. Writer Dr. Yasmine Gooneratne has rightly called that period the Golden Age of University life. Today four to six undergrads share rooms originally meant for just two and living standards are pathetic.

The original Wardens of Halls were themselves well known educationists like Vajira Cooke, Dr. Florence Ram Aluvihara, Mrs Westrop and others. It was a time of genuine learning. It was a time of culture and love of study. Only the best entered its portals. The sad ‘Quota system’ whereby undeserving students from the outstations (the best of a bad bunch from those areas) had not yet put in an appearance.

Today the ungrateful graduates of the Universities of Sri Lanka have arrived there without any personal expenditure whatsoever (except on their clothes.). They do not appreciate their good fortune but have now come to believe that it is their absolute RIGHT to demand more and more from a Milk Cow Government that does not know how to handle these young hooligans.

Not only are they educated free, but they actually want jobs to be waiting for them when they leave the University. Such expectations take away the breath of us poor taxpayers! An average young graduate’s knowledge is abysmal. He cannot read much around the subject since most books are in English. His reference work in his subject has been nil for the same reason and he has memorized reams of notes in Sinhala. Employable he is not.

Graduates have done nothing to justify being given salaries. They are certainly not justified in expecting a Government that has carried them from Grade one right up to a B.A. or B.SC Degree to now provide them with a living. They will soon be asking for a womb to tomb package. Graduates from the wealthy countries of the West struggle to find jobs and pay off their debts on University loans. They find their own jobs. They are forced to take lesser ranked jobs which may not be commensurate with their qualifications, but they keep trying. Governments do not help.

Having been at the receiving end of Government generosity (stupidity in my opinion) the Sri Lankan graduates expect the world to be handed to them gratis and yet they are probably the most poorly educated bunch of people ever to be found. I have had to interview many of them for teaching jobs but unless they come from the Department of English, or perhaps Department of Science, they remain unemployable.

As I write this (2017) the Yahapalana Government has been in power fora year. Has there been any significant improvement in the status quo? There has not. Indeed, we continue to churn out unemployable men and women and have the audacity to term them ‘Graduates’.

(Excerpted from The ‘Principal’

Factor first published in the Lanka Market Digest)