Future of Postgraduate Studies in Sri Lanka

Employability Agenda and Indoctrination:

By Saumya Liyanage

(This paper was first presented as the keynote speech at the inauguration of the postgraduate studies in English and Education degree programme at the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Sabaragamuwa, Sri Lanka, on the 26 February, 2023)

Introduction

During my tenure as the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS), University of the Visual and Performing Arts (UVPA), Colombo, I had opportunities to work with numerous postgraduate students coming from various disciplines, including performing arts, architecture, town planning, and media studies. Even now, I am supervising a couple of full-time research degrees: MPhils and PhDs. I have encountered many situations where our postgraduates grapple with various difficulties in pursuing their postgraduate careers and also experience difficulties in continuing and successfully completing their theses. As an academic who has gone through the same path, and with the support I received from my supervisors and administration, I feel that it is our responsibility to create a quality postgraduate culture where one can comfortably conduct research and submit a thesis while understanding the real meaning of postgraduate education.

Postgraduate culture

The term postgraduate culture is vital to understanding the nature and requirements of postgraduate education in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. The term culture emphasises a particular academic environment and the network of relationships that would enhance the postgraduate career. The academic environment encapsulates various research activities, seminars, and colloquia that are being conducted in universities, in collaboration with other higher education institutes and industry. Moreover, a network of relationships is also a vital component that enhances postgraduate career development. This includes how the faculties of graduate studies facilitate graduate students networking through various research activities conducted by the faculties and provide exposure to a wider academic discourse.

Employability agenda

Many postgraduate programmes in faculties of graduate studies and also undergraduate education are more likely to be changing towards the employability agenda (Gedye, Fender, and Chalkley 2004), steered by Government economic and labour policies. As mentioned by many scholars, for instance, Western economies are becoming increasingly based on knowledge, information, and communication (ibid., p. 382). This tendency has also been on the agenda for the Sri Lankan higher education sector while arguing the need to produce marketable graduates and professionally competent postgraduates from the National Universities. In line with this, many professionals, who want to develop their career goals, seek postgraduate opportunities. Their intention is to fulfil certain requirements that allow them to step forward in their chosen fields of interest. In return, Faculties of Graduate Studies offer professional diplomas and taught Masters degrees and PhDs for those who seek speedy qualifications.

This ‘employability agenda’ has discouraged the real meaning of a postgraduate career. Because this employability discourse is so strong, doing a Masters or a PhD nowadays is merely taking some weekend classes and submitting a minor thesis. The employability agenda is coming from quality assurance and other top-level policy-making bodies, while emphasising the need to find our own funding to run the State Universities. Further, as is happening elsewhere, postgraduate qualifications, particularly Masters and postgraduate diplomas, are such demanding products that they could be sold in the market for those who seek paper qualifications for career improvements. What I argue here is that the classical and deeper meaning pertaining to the postgraduate career and its true meaning of being a researcher in a higher education sector is being washed away or diminishing.

Noam Chomsky, one of the leading philosophers of this century, argues that there are two opposing poles of educational purposes that have been colliding for centuries. One is coming from the Enlightenment, which liberates all institutional frameworks of education but allows human beings to learn what they want. The other opposing argument is known as ‘indoctrination’. Indoctrination in education imposes certain structures and systems within which learning is moulded into a machine or labour-intensive work. Centuries-old Platonic utopianism is in action again in this century with the new light of neo-liberal economic and educational reforms.

As we all know, there are two categories in which one can register as a postgraduate and pursue a research career: part-time or full-time. Even though we have two categories, ultimately, all our postgraduate students become part-timers due to various issues they experience during their candidatures. This is a result of the lack of facilities provided by the postgraduate institutes. I am not sure whether our universities provide full research facilities for postgraduates. Due to the lack of infrastructure facilities, our state university sector has not been able to provide study spaces for postgraduates within their own faculties. What I mean by infrastructure is at least providing an office facility with internet access and a computer. Access to the University library and providing other resources to conduct research. Facilitating postgraduate reading rooms in the library, having weekly or monthly postgraduate seminars and forming postgraduate clusters where learning takes place between peers, providing services from discipline experts who can assist in finding relevant literature and other materials at the library, conducting research and writing skill development programmes, providing a free document delivery system, and so on. The majority of our postgraduate students’ experience writing difficulties, especially academic writing and language issues. There is no support system for them to improve their academic writing. Writing theses in Sinhala has become problematic as various standards are maintained by different schools and institutions. Furthermore, most of our postgraduate students lack a great deal of competency in research skills. Research skills include many components, such as broad knowledge of research methodologies, theories, and philosophies, skills to conduct field research, new approaches to methodological tools, software training, and IT skills.

Pursuing a Postgraduate career is not a fashionable choice. It is a difficult endeavour in many ways. In my early years of postgraduate study, I was experiencing financial hardships. Sometimes I did not have enough money to pay my rent. So, I decided to share an apartment with a student and eat twice a day. I ate an apple, which is a cheap fruit in Australia, and a slice of bread for my lunch. But my determination was to read well and learn how to write academic work in English. The central attraction of Flinders University was the big library they had in the centre of the University. As I see it, when reading and writing no longer play a key role in our academic endeavours, the place of the library and its impact on research gradually diminish. Sometimes, we can’t even locate our library because it is no longer the centre of the University. So, it is located somewhere in the periphery. Even though we always talk about the importance of a “particular research culture”. But we cannot develop this particular “culture”, without establishing this liberal, democratic atmosphere within our university system.

Starting a postgraduate career is similar to preparing for a solo performance on stage. In theatre and drama, we do solo performances and monologues. In this solo performance, you are both the narrator and the storyteller. You perform a story with your own voice and body and sometimes incorporate other characters and their stories in order to enhance your own story. Reading a postgraduate degree is also like a solo enactment. You have an audience, a panel of academics, and an academic readership where you are going to present your work. It is really freaky when you think about performing yourself in front of an audience without a single bit of support from your colleagues or other actors. It is a terrifying experience—what we call in acting, stage fright. As a postgraduate, your audience is not directly visible to you, but your audience is there, looking at you, your movements, and what you are going to present for them. So, it is an act of public solitude. It is a solitary practice. You always feel isolated, abandoned, marginalised, and depressed. You have to decide with whom you are going forward with this journey; you need to select which intersection would be the most appropriate for you to turn. It is you who should decide what you really want to do and how you really want to do it.

Doing a PhD means not just refining and tuning your instrument but also performing and creating new musical scores that you have never performed before—a particular enlightenment that you are going to experience. If I use metaphoric language to describe that experience, being a PhD candidate and going through that journey is like being an ascetic—a yogic trans that you experience as a researcher.

If you take or choose the difficult path of asceticism, this postgraduate career can lead to a particular nirvana that you may experience after doing a doctoral study. Asceticism is a difficult pathway—a rigorous meditational journey through which you will see emancipation.

Supervision

It is important that you understand the availability and existence of your supervisors because they are the lifelines of your academic journey. I call them lifelines not because they are swimming with you in the torrents of the river but because they are observing you, critiquing you at some point, and also showing you how to tackle those torrents in your difficult journey. Research has identified that the efficiency of a successful research degree depends on the effectiveness of the student-supervisor relationship. Positive relationships always promote success (MacCalling and Nayar, 2012, p. 66). But do not expect your supervisors to swim with you. No, they are not ready to swim with you. But you are the one who swims and intends to face the difficulties. Most of our postgraduates begin to hate their supervisors because they think that they are supposed to swim with you and join your journey. No, they are there for you to guide you and sometimes throw a lifeline if they think you are drowning. I remember Liyanage Amarakeerthi once saying, during his postgraduate years at Wisconsin University, that it is something like a swim or drown situation. Both options are there for you to choose from. It is you who should choose whether you want to swim or drown. First and foremost, you should develop certain essential skills that may support your academic career. In this regard, literacy, numeracy, research and methodological understanding, knowledge about referencing and plagiarism, and many other things would help you start a successful career in academia. Your academic writing is still an essential component of your postgraduate career. If you do not have the skills to write academic essays, it is unlikely that you can get through the degree.

So, your supervisor won’t be able to correct your language or proofread your writing. It is not her or his task to correct your language or teach you research methodology. The key competencies that you need to cultivate during your candidature, such as writing skills, referencing skills, and methodology skills, should be achieved by you, and it is your responsibility to equip yourself with those skills to pursue your career. In your postgraduate career, you are going to learn many other skills and competencies, so do not wait until you get the registration to learn how to write academic essays, how to structure your assignments, how to use relevant methodologies, how to read academic papers, how to understand key theories related to research, how to use word processing software, etc. You should learn all these things before working with your supervisor. If you are not ready to do this, think again about why you really want to pursue a postgraduate degree.

There are two key philosophical issues that exist in the field of postgraduate learning. First, there is the misinterpretation and misunderstanding of research methodologies and methods. Secondly, it is a misunderstanding of academic reading and writing. These two key areas have not been fully explored in our university system. We have opened up various avenues for postgraduates to pursue postgraduate degrees, but our institutions have failed to address some of the concurrent issues related to postgraduate studies.

Let me briefly explore these key areas that may need further attention of our academic institutions. Methods and methodologies are misinterpreted and misunderstood when used in research projects. Most of our researchers who conduct research, whether qualitative or quantitative, are confused with research tools and philosophies related to knowledge creation. Doing research means developing or contributing new knowledge and expanding the existing knowledge base. In this, methodologies are paramount. Why? It is because every research project confronts the question of epistemology. In other words, every research project tries to answer the question of knowledge and how you create knowledge. In this sense, the overall understanding of epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is vital. Further, methods or research tools are the existing tools that can be used to gather data, whether it is objective data or experiential data. But in the performing arts or in the social sciences and humanities, we tend to use qualitative approaches because we are often dealing with experiential data. When a novice is beginning to do research, she or he thinks that an understanding of research tools or methods is enough for her to successfully complete the research work. This is a fallacy that prevails in our academic spheres.

The second fallacy prevailing in our research culture is related to reading and writing. In reading, we do not teach our postgraduates to read systematically and critically to gather and analyse ideas. Further, we have not shown our postgraduates the value and importance of academic reading. Without developing the skill of academic reading, one cannot write a good thesis. Reading relevant primary and secondary literature and other resources allows you to grapple with existing ideas, theories, and philosophies to develop a conversation. This is an internal conversation that you may develop with your fellow writers and researchers. Yet mere reading is not enough for a researcher to write a thesis. You need to learn how to use those ideas in your writing while still keeping your voice heard in the discussion. This cannot be achieved overnight. You may need proper training and practice to master the skill of reading and comprehending ideas.

Academic writing is another area that needs further attention. This is something that has been misinterpreted in the area of research. We all have some sort of fear of writing essays. For some people, writing is an unpleasant exercise because, in general, it is the most difficult part for a student. There are many postgraduates who are facing numerous difficulties in academic writing, whether they are writing in Sinhala, Tamil, or English. It is not all about writing in English; as I have seen so far, writing in Sinhala is also problematic. What is the reason for all these fears pertaining to academic writing? First, it is because our education has embedded a certain template of thinking that does not allow us to think that writing is a corporeal thing. In other words, writing is an action. In our traditional template of thinking, writing comes after thinking. This is something that has been dominated over centuries in our academia and our way of thinking. We believe that thinking is happening in our brain, and the body follows what the mind says. The duality of mind-body problems is intact in this phenomenon. Along with this, our teaching and learning, our reading and writing, our assessments and evaluations—all these activities are structured as binary oppositions. Now, we cannot get rid of it. Hence, when our postgraduates are ready to write their theses, they get stuck with the writer’s block, not knowing how to start writing. Because, as always, they become “thinkers”. They start thinking, thinking, thinking for weeks and months, not producing a single word. They structure their chapters; they develop their arguments; all these things happen throughout the day, seven days a week. but only in their minds … until they realise that they are running out of time, then only they realise that they have not produced a single word for the thesis.

So, the majority of our postgraduates are ‘thinkers’. But we need ‘pragmatists’ who can understand the importance of action in research and writing. Writing is basically an action that triggers our thinking. If we really want to overcome the writers’ block, then we need to teach our postgraduates how to overcome this duality, body-mind problem, in research and writing. We need to teach them how to start the action of writing rather than stagnating in the world of thinking. Broadly speaking, our body, including our limbs, is a thinking substance, so there is no particular entity that generates thinking. Thinking takes place throughout our body, and bodily action triggers thinking. This may be a bit controversial and thought-provoking, but yes, we need a new way of thinking about our thinking, imagination, conceptualization, ideas, and emotions. Cognitive science sheds a new light, helping us to think in this direction: overcoming body-mind duality and understanding the primacy of our bodily knowing and learning. Philosophers Lakoff and Johnson argue that the mind is inherently embodied; thought is mostly unconscious; and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. These are the key tenets of cognitive science that have challenged the Western model of mind and matter recently (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999).

Professional training

Today, postgraduate study demands a great deal of ‘objectification of knowledge’. What do I mean by the term ‘objectification of knowledge? It is all about how we generate knowledge and how we can objectively articulate and observe worldly phenomena in order to develop particular knowledge. In a way, being a postgraduate means finding an answer to an epistemological problem. There are two ways that the career of a postgraduate is defined. In a traditional context, it is a solemn journey to create new knowledge by integrating and challenging the existing knowledge base of a particular discipline. Secondly, with the advent of commercialism and trade, the objectives of a postgraduate career have dramatically changed. In this, the career of a postgraduate is defined and described as the development of professional competencies and complying with and catering to the rapidly changing nature of government policies on trade and economies. This is one of the major debates about postgraduate studies, and there are many Ways that institutes and postgraduate faculties try to adapt their strategies and programmes to meet these two requirements. However, it is not an easy task for an institution to maintain the balance between these two poles. Some may tend to continue the traditional way of seeking knowledge, while others introduce new degree programmes to cater to the changing policies of governments and their manpower targets.

However, today’s challenge is how to maintain a balance between professionalism and the classical meaning of research and knowledge development. I believe that the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Sabaragamuwa University would maintain a proper balance between these two poles and secure the classical and philosophical underpinnings of PG studies and knowledge creation. There is no single piece of knowledge that explores this world. Knowledge is partial and contextual. Scientific rationality is one way of extricating truth. But knowledge is not just an objective entity but is innate and subjective. This is the shift that has occurred in recent years in epistemology. In our postgraduate careers, we tend to generate knowledge for the betterment of humankind. However, it is evident that knowledge is not always perceivable as objectivity or objectively grasped. Much of our knowledge and cognition take place beneath our conscious level, and therefore, the knowledge that an individual possesses is unknown to us.

I wish all the postgraduates who pursue a research career at the FGS, Sabaragamuwa University, the best of luck.

References:

Gedye, S., Fender, E., & Chalkley, B. (2004, ‘Students’ Undergraduate Expectations and Post-Graduation Experiences of the Value of a Degree’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 381–396.

Maturana, HR, and Varela, FJ, 1980, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realisation of the Living, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands.

McCallin, A., and Nayar, S. (2012, ‘Postgraduate research supervision: a critical review of current practice’, Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 63–74.

 Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind And Its Challenge To Western Thought. Basic Books.

(Saumya Liyanage is professor in Drama and Theatre and is currently working at the Department of Theatre, Ballet, and Modern Dance, Faculty of Dance and Drama, University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka)