Sri Lankan tech schools prepare you for 1995. I dunno what it’s like in India. What should people be studying? According to freelancer.com, it’s HTML5, Google Adsense, Android, academic writing and JQuery. Those are the job categories showing the highest growth.

India has a different university problem than Sri Lanka. We have too few seats that produce unemployable graduates. They have too many seats that also produce unemployable graduates. I guess I’d rather have their problem. I guess. “Why do we go to school?” There are two basic theories, as per this great New Yorker article. It’s to get a better job, or it’s to just get better.

The kid goes to St. Thomas College, Mount Lavinia. I like the school, but there are obviously ways it could improve. Let’s start with the traffic. This is a guest post by my girlfriend Roel. St. Thomas’s College, Mount Lavinia has stood around in the same location for over a hundred years. Heres what they should do next.

I applied for some degree programs last year though, in all honesty, I couldn’t find much to learn from them. Journalism programs basically end their digital media components where I am right now, and other programs are not directly related. Either thru sour grapes or truthiness, I feel that I’m too cool for school. So, am I a geek anti-intellectual? A bit I guess.

Sri Lankan University students regularly protest and the police regularly beat them up. This is so regular than most people here have forgotten the underlying issues and think that students do nothing but protest. I don’t agree with most of the solutions the students call for (restricting privatization, guaranteeing government jobs), but I do agree with the grievance. The education system is a social contract we have with our youth. Work hard, go to uni, you’ll get a job. This is not necessarily a guarantee, but it should at least be a probability. In Sri Lanka university graduates actually have a higher unemployment rate than people that don’t get a higher education. So something is deeply, deeply wrong. The social contract has been broken, and I understand why they’re occupying the Ministry of Higher Education. For more on what this contract is and why it matters, have a look at this awesomely illustrated talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

Saw this big medical students protest today. As far as I can tell they were protesting against PMC in Malabe, which I assume is Private Medical College. Their signs said ‘keep free education free, etc.’ I don’t really agree with them. I think we should keep the free education system, for doctors especially it’s OK. There are, however, so few spots in university and so many talented human beings that don’t get a shot. They should have the option of a self-sustaining, private system.

This is a lizard. He lives between my house and the 177 bus stop. Other animals that hang out here include cows, that evil doberman, and assorted stray dogs. Sometimes there’s an organ grinder with two anorexic looking monkeys. I think one of these animals is spying on me, cause Morquendi knows about the World Bank money now… Last night I gave Wolfowitz a handjob and made my Lakh for the month. He was having Passover dinner at the Ambassador’s and made me sneak him some white bread. I asked if he wanted a hamburger or something but he just wanted white bread. Ate that shit like a rabid chipmunk. I had a cold shower and buried the money in my backyard. Saving up for a trishaw.

This is in response to this comment by Morquendi… He has issues not with the issues I bring up but with me, personally. I think I’ll go ahead and bear the wrath of Morq’s evil eye as it leaves his navel. He can’t seem to engage in the debate beyond a personal level – be it anecdotes of people he knows or calling Chanuka an asshole- so, I’ll take it on that level. For a debate on higher education, Morquendi a surprising disdain for facts, stats and research. It’s unclear that he values higher education at all. Specifically, its injunction to look beyond ones own immediate perceptions in trying to make sense of the world. In the spirit of fun, let’s see what kind of University it would take to live up to Morquendi’s standards.

I think there have been 3 principals (more?) sacked for taking bribes to let kids into school. I’d say the the extent of the problem points to a systematic problem more than individual failures. Education is so damn stressful in this country. When I took the SATs I didn’t study at all, I just took them. I also pretty much coasted through high school. Here kids study all year for their A/Levels and spend what should be beer money on tuition classes. Apparently the rat race starts earlier, with your parents bribing your way into school. The sad thing is that rat race doesn’t lead anywhere. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to be unemployed. Here’s the intro for a forthcoming piece on the subject, not by me. My comments are in italics.

This is a hideously mixed metaphor, but these Photoshopped notes show a loose idea of what a Rupee worth of Education gets you – by class. Morquendi has found a bunch of interesting stuff in his navel, but no arguments. I’ll take his side and say that it is important to educate more poor people. Now, first things first. Building Universities for the poor is like offering ice cream to somebody that hasn’t had breakfast, lunch or dinner. To even get into Universities you have to pass Primary School, 0/Levels, and A/Levels. As you can see, the poor are getting good value through grade 5, but they’re dropping out in droves before they finish ‘high school’ (grade 13). Only 2% of the poorest people get to University. The break in the system is much earlier, and we have to fix that…