The Examiner has more opinions than it has staff. We maintain unanimity in our facts, not the inferences we draw from them. This examination is no exception.
Thirty two Sri Lankan students will fly to universities abroad on government funded undergraduate scholarships; the first in decades.
Intended to educate top-performing students at global universities and bring their brains and knowledge back to Sri Lanka, the scholarship scheme is shoddily implemented. Top students are heading for mid-tier universities on full scholarships. The scheme also risks taxpayers financing brain drain, as bonds guaranteeing their return may not be robust.
The students applied to top five hundred ranked universities abroad. Most have been admitted. In return, the scholars sign a bond agreeing to come back to Sri Lanka, one year for every year that the government funds their education abroad.
Two hundred million rupees has been allocated for the scheme in this year’s budget. More will be spent in years to come. Aiming to send two hundred scholars over five years, the total cost will likely amount to over three and a half billion rupees.
The scheme has two aims, says Madhura Senevirathna, the deputy minister of education, who has substantial day-to-day responsibility over the ministry as the education minister is also the prime minister. First, when the scholars return they will contribute to the country’s development by bringing back new skills and “global trends”. Second, the scholarship scheme will enable those from poor and rural backgrounds — who don’t normally have the means — to study abroad.
Government scholarships like this aren’t new to Sri Lanka. In the 1870s, the government started awarding scholarships to attend British universities like Oxford or Cambridge. This practice survived for nearly a century. Attempts to revive undergraduate scholarships were made in 2019, but they weren’t implemented as the government changed.
However, the present revival has many shortcomings. The Examiner asked for a policy document on the scheme, but the deputy minister could only point to a cabinet decision. But we pieced together the scheme’s operations from interviews and government documents.
Top-tier students to mid-tier universities
Ranul (name changed), a workman’s son and one of the scholars, scored one of the highest ranks in the 2024 A Levels.
The scholarship lets applicants pick from the top five hundred universities. But Ranul didn’t have the funds to apply to multiple universities. So he decided to play it safe and steer clear of ambitious options. His family scrambled to get the money to apply to one university, a university that students with Bs and Cs get into.
Ranul’s story points to three issues with the scholarship scheme. Despite the huge financial outlay, it sends students to universities that aren’t much better than local universities, it doesn’t advance scholars’ application fees, and doesn’t guide them through the complex application process.
First, it doesn’t limit the scholarship to the best universities and thus may not be good value for money. We calculated that the cost of educating two hundred students overseas is roughly equivalent to the cost of educating 1786 engineers or 682 doctors at our own universities, which are ranked between thousand and 1200 in global rankings.
Thuwaragesh Jayachandran, a government school student now at CalTech, thinks the top five hundred category is arbitrary.
“Local A Level top rankers can get into really good universities like Cambridge.”
He believes the government should have selected exceptional universities. “At the very least pick the top fifty not top five hundred.”
Jayachandran went abroad independently, with the support of The Strivers’ Network, a student-run mentorship system which helps government school students apply to foreign universities. He now mentors others like him.
The ministry didn’t provide the names of the scholars, or which universities they will attend – despite a month since our RTI application.
Jayachandran emphasised the benefits of going to exclusive universities: “Their endowments are huge.” Top universities have high academic standards and vast amounts of funding which give students opportunities that you couldn’t dream of at local universities, he added.
