This is the text of a talk that I am giving on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka in Belihuloya on the 7th of July 2006. A excerpt is given below:
The world economy is becoming more knowledge intensive and communication dependent. Leaving aside the question of cause and effect, clearly the Internet and the old things that can be done better through it and the new things that can be done for the first time through it are integrally connected to the effective functioning in the world economy.
It is not that we need the Internet to mine the gems this province is famous for; but that it is likely that those gems will fetch a better price if we use the Internet to market them worldwide.
So this is the essence of the age of the Internet: the lowering of time and space barriers to those who have access to its full potential; the further marginalization of those without that access.
I did not say that marginalization is bad. Marginalization, separation, isolation are what a vanavasi monk needs to pursue his search for truth. The last thing he needs in the aranya is the Internet.
I believe that marginalization is the opposite of what is needed by this island and its 20 million inhabitants. We need greater integration and engagement with the world, not less. We need to improve the terms of integration: from exporting housemaids to knowledge process outsourcing; from exporting agricultural and industrial commodities to flourishing in niche markets in agricultural and industrial value-added products.
In these tasks, the university and the Internet both have vital roles to play. In the next few minutes I hope to shed light on those roles, with emphasis on the university.
10 Comments
Sam
I may be wrong. But my personal view is ‘university supposes to deliver skills for the country – what country need’.
We all know there is no internet base journalism in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka do not have internet (Colombo bubble is not Sri Lanka).
All the web sites we have publish content from paper base publication and there is no direct revenue from the internet (not only for news papers – but any business in Sri Lanka do not have any direct revenue from the internet).
So I think the answer to top question is:
‘That is diploma for Sri Lanka – ‘Siripala Mama’ do not have internet – learn how to be a good journalist for ‘Siripala Mama’– He spend his money for teach you guys and he is not reach person to spend money on bullshit’.
But I do not mean we should not teach our students foreign skills. Because migration is the real hope we have and that is one of the main revenue in Sri Lanka. So I’m always for it.
Marlon
Sam,
I don’t think this is the right attitude. Journos should use Internet and we see a good development in Rivira and Nation newspapers, the journos at least publish their email IDs along with their articles so that the readers could write to them.
Most of the newspapers get good revenue by banner adds and subscriptions too.
Most of the universities have leased lines and very rarely they allow the students to use the facility though.
kulendra
This is quite interesting, specially because of me being an undergrad at an engineering university in SL.
I quite disagree with the first commentor. Mainly because to ‘be a good journalist for Siripala Mama’ one does not have to be deprived of internet. What I see is that WITH internet, you’ll learn more about how things work in other places. (I mean internet doesn’t have to be something that is used to DELIVER only, it can and IS used to receive as well.) IF we are to think of giving internet to people who can only deliver things through, internet, I believe it would be quite similar to giving papers or textbooks to only people who can write back into papers and textbooks.
However, sadly the govt., has not quite realised this, and to make it worse, there are enough hierarchical structures that stop you from making your own move.
Our university has had a 2mbps connection for the past three years. Given that there are 2400 students in the university, this is obviously not enough. (NO don’t even try to talk about teletraffic theory, at any given time during the day, the speed was about few hundred bps per second).
Now whats the impact does this make? Obviously we dont DELIVER any engineering stuff off the internet and we dont plan to. But the point is that most of the research work, cross references, archives are on the internet. So if you want to get, say a research paper, you have to login in teh morning and if you are lucky by 3pm the session wouldn’t have been timed out.
The worse situation was that the students were not allowed to get at least a bit proactive and try to get a connection to the uni. Reason ‘policies’. I’m all for policies as long as they ‘help’. However the point here was that to spend university’s money you have to go through a tender procedure, the ministry has to apporve the money etc. etc. SO what if ‘we pay for our connection?’ answer ‘You cant interfere with university’.
Luckily the ministries concerned have now decided to get an STM-1 (155Mbps) connection to the whole school and university system. I’m pretty sure that once things get going, this would be fairly inadequate too. But its a good start. And its also a good start that some schools in Hambanthota and Colombo and some universities are interconnected trhough an intiative by a telecomm company. (Im pretty sure they’re also getting something off of it. But its better than nothing.)
P:S:
Other than ‘exporting’ our talents, I think there are a few good reasons why we need to get the skills that others all over the world have.
sam
Hi Kulendra..
Yes. I may be wrong. I agree with [“it can and IS used to receive as well”]. Every point you correct me, I accept as it is.
Even this is out of the topic though; looking at your post all I can see is our universities just become a consumer of technology but not a creator of the technology.
Remember internet was born, raised, and managed inside US universities. Most of the technologies we used today born inside universities. Universities provide those to the society.
But in Sri Lanka society just provide what ever the university need – society is not rich – you know how we live – I know we can’t give everything universities need – when we put our hardly earn tax coin to the education we expect something in return. (There is nothing call free lunch).
Universities can’t escape form the responsibility by just saying ‘we don’t have that and we do not have this’. We are the society expect universities will invent the technology we need using the resources we have (think about India, china, USA – they use the resources they have & invent what they need). Am I expecting too much?
I know at the end of the day it is easier to import than manufacture.
kulendra
This is also going to be quite off the topic I suppose :)
“Even this is out of the topic though; looking at your post all I can see is our universities just become a consumer of technology but not a creator of the technology.”
Quite true. I agree with you on this statement on some experience that I have had. But then again, when its with regards to internet,the question I raised was whether it should be allowed only to people who can contribute to it. I think we both are talking quite the same thing, but are talking in different words.
I dont think that any university in SL has contributed LARGELY to the internet and I don’t think we have made any additions. We have adopted a few things (such as virtual classrooms). But just by looking at how much we have done to internet, can we judge whether or not the universities have become consumers or contributors? For the past few years we have given and implemented optimisation plans for manufacturing companies, developed plans on power utilisation optimisation, road traffic control and a lot of other things (its a different story that they are barely implemented.) So answer your second question ‘we have invented enough’ but I also agree that we have not done enough to get them implemented. So to answer your comment ‘Universities can’t escape form the responsibility by …’ yes I agree we have sort of being trying to do things so that there is an excuse like ‘hey we did it, they didnt do their part’.
But getting back again to internet, what I personally believe is that the reason why they have not contributed much to the internet as you see is because its merely been a tool for us. I’m not sure if the computer engineering department has any projects on the internet itself but we, the other specialisation fields, see it just as a tool. :)
Samarajiva
What can we do with ICTs: technology takers or technology makers?
Tough questions, but we sought to assemble some evidence of what is going on in the most dynamic industry in Sri Lanka, telecom, back in 2002: http://www.educationforum.lk/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/NASTEC_S&T.pdf
See also http://www.educationforum.lk/2005/08/st-capacity-for-a-service-economy/
Revantha
Can Some body please explain me as to the exact meaning of the phrase “Non Voice Telephony, this was the heading of a recently floated add on the papers by TRC, all this while I thought Telephony is about Voice , but never knew a non voice version of it..
thx,
Sujata Gamage
The expectation that “all universities should be technology makers” applies to MITs and Harvards of this world. For every “MIT and Harvard” there are 10 or more “Other” universities that do not conduct much original research of their own. The number of doctoral graduate produced and the percent of expenditure devoted to research determine whether a university is a technology maker. By these measures MIT and Harvard and the like are technology makers. Others are not.
To achieve the qualities of a doctoral/research university it is accepted that an institution would produce at least 20 doctoral graduates a year (Carnegie Classification, 2000). All 13 universities in Sri Lanka together produced less than 20 doctoral graduates per year between the period 1991-2000 (Samarajeewa, Research and Research Training in Sri Lanka, University Grants Commission, Colombo, Sri Lanka). In a survey of universities in Asia conducted by Asia Week in 2000, University of Colombo, the only university to be considered, came dead last from among 77 multi-disciplinary institutions ranked. Situation could not have changed significantly in the last few years. Clearly in Sri Lanka we do not have universities that can be technology makers.
But that is ok because universities are first and foremost educational institutions. At our stage of development in Sri Lanka if our universities can produce quality graduates at the undergraduate level that would more than adequate. The tragedy is that our universities are not even equipped to do that.
Several papers on related topics can be found in the Sri Lanka Education Forum web site.
http://www.educationforum.lk/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/Faculty Quality Report.pdf
http://www.educationforum.lk/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/PGR_SeminarPaper.pdf
Devaka Punchihewa
This is an interesting debate, however you all missed out the most essential part of it. WHY real knowledge creation and technology makers are not arising from Sri Lankan university system? We all know the reasons!
If we can find remedy for this problem Sri Lankan acadamia will also create world reneowned knowledge and definitely the technologies as well. I’ll have few examples, who identified the Bird flu? One Sri Lankan Researcher who migrated to Hong Kong. How many Sri Lankan engineers and reasearchers are working for NASA? How about their contribution to American Society?
When Sri Lankans go aboroad they sencond to none, Why? But in Sri Lanka the same kind of people with same talents were treated as useless by the society and the systems. In such an environment how can we think of technology makers? In this country it is extremely hard even to survive if you concentrate on real and honest job.
We as a country first of all eliminate useless politics and political worshipping, unwanted bereaucracy, internally and externally from organizations including universities for the god sake. And let people to work with dignity and pride, be responsible for what they do. The day we accomplish this society SRI LANKA will also produce technology makers for sure.
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