I wish to thank R. M. B. Senanayake for his article "Popular misconceptions about university education" (‘The Island’, September 2, 2008). Articles that seek to seriously discuss the problems of our universities ought to be welcomed by everyone, because in the end they affect everyone. But I had some difficulty in exactly identifying his argument, so I would be thankful to him if he could clarify some matters.

Senanayake says, with his undoubted expertise in economics, that "the economic growth in developed countries today is driven not by capital investment in material resources but in human resources" (my emphasis). Although he attributes this statement to "economists", he appears to endorses it. This is the US economists’ justification for the high university enrolment rate there. In other words, the US invests in human resource development (by providing more university training), because its economists believe that these graduates will then drive its economic growth.

But then he says that our universities have got it wrong, because they have focused on quantity rather than quality: "Our priority for human development in higher education was misplaced and the consequence is the unemployment of graduates."

Senanayake brings in the issue of quality, although admitting that even France and UK – countries that, to my knowledge, have healthy economic growths – have found it difficult to maintain it and that even the US has a "hierarchy" of quality. He believes that the reason why quality survived (at the top of the hierarchy, obviously) in the US is because they are "free from government control." But then, in a democracy such as ours, universities can only protect themselves from government control, if they are a powerful electoral issue and they can do this only if they possess money or votes.

Politicians listen to only two things: money and huge vote banks. This would mean that we must, as in the US, have large numbers of academics, researchers and students in our universities to preserve institutional autonomy and academic freedom! Interestingly, he also says that; "quality and productivity improvement, according to economics comes only where there is competition," which again argues for huge numbers in universities to improve quality!

By his own argument then, the strategy (overproduction of graduates) was correct (economic principles), so there must be a different reason (not poor quality), for the unexpected consequences (unemployment of graduates, lack of economic growth).

I for one do not believe that such improvement necessarily follows competition. For instance, many reasons come to mind: the war, rising oil prices, lack of infrastructure development and investment etc., may have curtailed industrial growth; opening up to global capitalism (rather than merely adopting open market policies), may have destroyed our industries and the opportunities for graduate utilisation; lack of international competitiveness and opportunities may have hampered graduate employment overseas (where the contrary was the case, as in medicine and engineering, there is no unemployment); lack of vision may have been a reason too (why were these graduates not made use of to expand our education sector?)

Maybe the universities did their job – maybe the other sectors didn’t do their’s.

I perceived a sense of misgiving in his writing that university education is no longer limited to the elites, such as the economic elites (the 600 who attended Harvard in the seventeenth century) or the social elites (the English-speaking Ceylonese).

I for one have different thoughts. Our recent past tells us that our elites from the colonial (and immediate post-colonial) days have not done justice to the opportunity they were given to lift the country out of general misery. It is they who invented nepotism, corruption, sectarianism, minoritism and the reciprocal back-scratching reflexes which the masses have since learnt to imitate brilliantly.

With regard to Sri Lankan universities themselves, Senanayake says that there was "excellence" and "quality in the 1950s and 1960s." So we have had in the past, the universities (and the graduates) we are seeking now. But where were their social results? An ‘excellence’ whose existence depended on its seclusion from the masses (as he argues), could not have survived indefinitely, if it did not serve those masses too. The changes that took place from the 1950s onwards cannot be blamed on the impatience of the masses or political opportunism alone; there is more culpability on the selfishness of the elites. The ‘elitist’ model failed because the elites proved to be a failure: they did not share enough.

Therefore, I have to be glad that the university portals are now open to the ‘hoi polloi’. This must have been what happened at Harvard between the seventeenth century and now.

Senanayake says that; "Now the purpose of a university is purely utilitarian." Does he endorse this view, or is he only reporting reality as he sees it?

In fact, universities themselves don’t quite think that their purpose is purely utilitarian. This is only the view held by people whose minds are dominated by economic principles, and it is called the "functionalist view of higher education." According to this view, the universities justify their existence by providing economic returns for the opportunity costs incurred by the society for their upkeep. This view is the result of the quantification-worship that our minds have got accustomed to: what cannot be quantified cannot enter a formula, therefore it must not exist!

Ronald Barnett, in his book ‘The Idea of Higher Education’, discusses this view and points out some problems with it. The whole society does indeed provide for the universities’ upkeep (for instance by providing tax money), but how does one ensure that the economic returns also go to the whole society? More usually, it is again the elites in society (industrialists, businessmen, politicians etc) who benefit from these ‘returns’, as the many examples of the ‘utilitarian’ applications of university ‘returns’ that Senanayake has listed would show. To become more ‘sensitive’ to the ‘needs’ of industrialist ‘functionalist demands can only make the universities even more for the service of the elites alone.

The universities themselves do not share this view. Harvard University has a research arm called the Mind/Body Institute which is not utilitarian. Oxford University has a Chair for the Public Understanding of Science and recently set up a Centre for Science and Civilization, cognizant of its wider duties. All these universities dance with elites only so that they can obtain for themselves the wherewithal to sing their own tune. ‘Pure utilitarianism’ is seen only through the economics tunnel-vision.

I am not suggesting that the present state of things, with unmanageable undergraduate numbers and tens of thousands of unemployed graduates, is the ideal state of affairs for higher education. All I am suggesting is that in our complex world – including its imperfect democracy, imperfect economics, imperfect everything – judgement cannot be passed so flippantly. In particular, I disagree that universities are to blame for our economic stagnation, that they must return to elitist admission policies, or that they must embrace ‘pure utilitarianism’.

A pop song doing the radio rounds these days, called ‘Pink Paradise’, has an interesting idea. We all like trees and greenery and visit parks and forests. What if somebody cut down all the trees, put them in a museum, and charged one-and-a-half dollars for anyone who liked to see them? It might be justified on the grounds that a portion of the money can be used for botanical research. Besides, economists will point out that trees in the forest cannot generate wealth and therefore are of no use, and trees in the museum generate revenue – let me call it the functionalist view of forestry.

When reading this idea, I wonder if Senanayake will recall his Blake: