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The case for a ‘university’

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2 years ago

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Once education is ‘dumbed down’ thus, reduced to a process of acquiring a qualification and a set of competencies as evidence of such, there is an easy case for the dismantling of the public university system: “if what you do can just as well be done using less space, less time, less trained teachers, and even online, what is the justification for allocating all these physical resources and the money that goes into sustaining them?”

by Hasini Lecamwasam

Any meaningful exercise in knowledge production centrally involves investigating the systems of thought that undergird our social, political, and economic arrangements, with a view to changing them to be better for more people. The university’s mandate as a site of critical dialogue, social justice, and struggle for human liberation are closely connected to this function. It is for this reason that all subjects taught in a university, whether in the arts and humanities or STEM disciplines, are supposed to provide a grounding in conceptual investigation that enables one to see through the paradigm that frames knowledge, and projects it as ‘objective truth’, ‘science’ as an expression of it, and so on. In other words, all kinds of training imparted by a university should be based on a critical approach to the politics and relativity of truth and knowledge. However, the gradual incursion of market interests into the university space has contributed towards pushing through changes that undermine this mandate of a university, now increasingly conditioning how those within universities view it as well.

In research, this translates into conducting studies that have the capacity to attract industry actors who can bring in greater funding. However, industry actors in turn are attracted to work that tells them how their profits can increase, rather than research in pursuance of societal wellbeing. This constrains what is possible and, over time, the very parameters of thought in research. In consequence, the focus of research has shifted from investigating conceptual paradoxes (what are called ‘research problems’) to collecting empirical data (‘research questions’), especially in HSS disciplines. Accordingly, criteria for research excellence are evolving to reward information-intensive research that serves simply to reinforce existing social structures and systems by seeking answers to such banal questions as: ‘why do people prefer private universities?’; ‘what is the demand for STEM subjects like?’; ‘what are the perceptions towards the relevance of arts and humanities?’; ‘how to achieve better standards in higher education through quality assurance?’, and the like. Answers to such questions are more and more explored using quantitative methods (KAP surveys, etc.), supplemented by anecdotal qualitative ‘evidence’, which, together, tend to focus on the downstream effects of much larger phenomena, rather than the political and economic dimensions of social problems that fundamentally shape them, as well as any study of them.

These transformations are also reflected in teaching-learning exercises, not least because our research necessarily informs our teaching. ‘Critical’ discussions in classrooms are becoming a regrettably rare occurrence. Instead, most lectures are simple that: lectures, i.e. one-way communications where teachers parrot away information for students to repeat at examinations and scrape off good grades.

The stamp of this sort of uncritical, ‘information-based’ education baked on to several of us manifests in the conservatism with which certain everyday issues are approached, and the highly individualistic not-in-my-backyard syndrome because of which many decide not to engage with them. A few months ago, undergraduates of Peradeniya were told they cannot protest in front of the Senate building, given its historical and administrative significance. This was recently topped off with an even more egregious directive barring them entry into the adjacent pillar area, lest they affront the administration or the visiting public with loud music and, god forbid, public displays of affection. These incidents, and the lack of due outrage on the part of teachers and certain sections of the student body itself, made me reflect seriously on how questions of education, including academic and student life, are understood, and the increasingly restrictive interpretation of the university it signifies.

The boiling down of education, particularly higher education, to a mere qualification necessary for employment, and the consequent chipping away at the conditions that make for a ‘profound’ education – political consciousness, activism, and even love and affection between peers – is happening in a certain context: Sri Lanka’s drive towards education marketisation which has several global precedents, and the consequent policy, funding, and training landscape surrounding higher education globally. In Sri Lanka, successive governments, prompted in no small measure by external funding institutions such as the World Bank, have firstly sought to align education with market demands, and subsequently turn the service itself into a commodity. As a result, education is coming to be understood more and more in cost-benefit terms (whose costs and benefits are both individually accrued, in line with the individualism of the neoliberal market), rather than the overall development of students and society, an attitude that is increasingly internalised by students, educators, and administrators alike.

Once education is ‘dumbed down’ thus, reduced to a process of acquiring a qualification and a set of competencies as evidence of such, there is an easy case for the dismantling of the public university system: “if what you do can just as well be done using less space, less time, less trained teachers, and even online, what is the justification for allocating all these physical resources and the money that goes into sustaining them?” If student activity was to be limited to the classroom, and teachers were to simply cover a given syllabus, if our vision of education is also limited to one of students attending lectures and teachers simply facilitating the process, then we have to agree that we must take up less space and consequently less money.

The plea to return to a culture of critical education is not simply about greater consciousness and activism so students (and perhaps teachers) could inhabit the university space more freely; it is about what such a shift would signify. A ‘university’ is not needed simply to churn out employable graduates. Any training institute squeezed into a five storied building (or less) can do that, without the thought or trouble that goes into creating and maintaining an actual university. Of course, our students need to find employment, and we need to prepare them for that; but what distinctively makes us a university is the critical edge they are supposed to walk away with, that helps them be more than cogs in the wheel. That is the kind of education that would have equipped them – and us as teachers – to rise up with more passion against arbitrary directives seeped in Victorian moralism and red tapism; that is also the kind of education that alone would help us climb out of the current economic pit prioritising human wellbeing over that of macroeconomic indicators.

So, let us dare to do the counter-intuitive, and continue to push agendas of critical research (likely without funding) and critical discussion in classrooms and outside (at the risk of penalisation) within universities because, ironically, the case for the survival of the university itself hinges on that.

(Hasini Lecamwasam is attached to the Department of Political Science, University of Peradeniya)

Kuppi is a politics and a pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.


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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

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8 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

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Features

Why Pi Day?

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8 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

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Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

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1 day ago

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2026/03/12

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A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.

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