Pitfalls and exclusions in academic recruitment

A public university relies on its teachers in fulfilling its responsibilities to the wider community. While teaching remains the chief responsibility of the academic staff, they also conduct research and play a central role in keeping the university a vibrant space where they and students can freely participate in conversations that concern not just routine classroom education but also society at large. The broader intellectual culture and intellectual integrity of a university thus depend on how its academics perform their functions. Therefore, universities should take the task of recruiting their academics seriously. It is important to ensure that this task is done responsibly, transparently and credibly through a fair, thorough and multi-phased evaluation process.

As both an applicant and a member of selection panels for recruitment, I hold that the recruitment procedures, currently in place in our university system, require radical reforms. Echoing some of the concerns raised by Kaushalya Perera in her Kuppi article on recruitment in March 2026, I focus on the limitations I have observed and experienced, specifically in the recruitment of Lecturer (Probationary) and Senior Lecturer positions. The article also aims to explore how these shortcomings could be addressed.

The Advertisement

Recruitment for Lecturer (Probationary) and Senior Lecturer positions is done through an open-advertisement which also involves an interview with shortlisted candidates. Advertisements are finalised in line with a template issued by the Registrar’s Office. Generally, an initial draft, prepared by the Registrar’s Office, is sent to the relevant academic departments for revisions. The revisions have to be made within the template provided, which allows space for the mention of only specialisation requirements.

It should be noted that not all revisions to the advertisement, suggested by the Department Head, are accepted in the next round. Deans, Vice Chancellors and Registrars, who have very little understanding of the disciplines associated with the position, sometimes reject the changes proposed by the Department. Technocratic in their thinking, they don’t recognise that an academic programme can be taught by persons with specialisation in another overlapping discipline. For instance, a position in English, at a university in Sri Lanka, is very well suited to not just those who have postgraduate qualifications in literary studies but also those who are from the disciplines of Applied Linguistics, Cultural Studies or Translation Studies, as these areas are taught as sub-fields of English studies at most universities in the country. These disciplinary overlaps, even when pointed out by Heads, are often overlooked by our administrators.

In place of this process, dominated by academic administrators and registrars, the advertisement should ideally emerge, from the relevant department, in the form of a comprehensive job description. It should mention the nature of the position advertised, the kind of teaching (and research) expected, how the position relates to other positions in the department, in terms of specialisation and workload, and the ways in which the recruited candidate would contribute to overall institutional development.

There can be no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to recruitment. Individual departments vary in size, strength and specialisation requirements. Departments with sizable academic staff may want to emphasise specialisation during recruitment, whereas smaller departments may prefer generalists who can handle a wide-array of courses. Specifying the rationale for the requirements included in the job description may help potential applicants get an understanding of the position advertised and the selection panel to conduct the evaluation process in a fair manner.

Review of Applications

Once applications are received, we sometimes find promising candidates but with qualifications that don’t carry in their title the name of the discipline or the department in which the position is advertised. Sometimes the disciplines or fields of specialisation that appear in the advertisement and the ones that appear in the qualifications are not identical in nomenclature, even though the research undertaken by the applicant during their graduate studies is strongly relevant to the position advertised. Even when such applications are accompanied by strong and relevant publications, our system does not view them positively. Instead, nomenclatural differences are used to reject promising candidates. Such differences are also used as a pretext when universities want to exclude a candidate for their cultural background, political beliefs or other reasons. Even if academic departments recognise such applications, at the next stage, the administrators of the university try to veto them. We lose inter-disciplinary scholars of high academic standing because of the high-handedness of university administrators.

Selection Panels

Selection panels for academic positions typically comprise the Vice Chancellor, the Dean of the Faculty, the Head of the Department, two academics nominated by the Senate and two members of the University Council. In the case of programmes/disciplines jointly housed under a single department, if the Head comes from a discipline other than the one in which the position is advertised, they may not be able to contribute in an informed manner to the recruitment process. However, some Heads refuse to appoint nominees from the relevant discipline in their place as they view sitting on selection panels as their exclusive privilege.

Sometimes university Senates do not take the appointment of Senate nominees seriously. These appointments are decided in a hurry without serious deliberations at senate meetings packed with numerous agenda items. Sometimes even if the relevant department has suitable academics to serve as Senate nominees, the Senate chooses academics from other departments or disciplines who do not have a nuanced understanding of the requirements of the position advertised and its disciplinary parameters. Sometimes specialists in the relevant discipline may not be available at a university. On such occasions, Senates tend to fill up the positions with academics from other disciplines, instead of inviting external nominees from other universities. At a state university in Sri Lanka, I was interviewed thrice for academic positions by selection panels that comprised not even one specialist from the relevant discipline.

The Marking Scheme

The marking schemes used in recruitment have their own drawbacks. Publications are sometimes evaluated for their quantity rather than quality. The opinion of the subject specialist is not sought or taken seriously when a candidate’s research is evaluated. This is why our universities are saddled with academics who engage in plagiarism or predatory publishing. The evaluation process should be tightened in such a way to bar the entry of those who lack academic integrity.

It is worrying to see that marking schemes and schemes of recruitment penalise applicants who have excelled in their graduate studies and are well-reputed for their recent research and publications just because they did not earn a first-class or second-class upper-division pass at the undergraduate level. Our narrow focus on a candidate’s first degree prevents us from giving due recognition to how that person has gained intellectual depth over the years. Some marking rubrics, which allocate points for eye-contact and posture during the interview, dilute the seriousness associated with the academic position, de-prioritise scholarship and turn the interview process into a stage performance.

Cultural Credibility

In recruitment, many universities look for cultural credibility (a term that I borrow from the work of Sulaxana Hippisley) as an unwritten requirement. Some departments are reluctant to hire applicants who are not their alumni. Some selection panels discriminate against candidates from certain ethnic or religious backgrounds. In some departments, women are rejected because they are likely to go on maternity leave or have more domestic responsibilities than men. Gender and sexual minorities have to mute and censor their identities at interviews because they are likely to face rejection if they openly declare their orientation. We have no policies and procedures in place to ensure recruitment is conducted in an inclusive way that sees diversity as a strength.

The Way-forward

When recruitment fails, the entire intellectual culture of that university takes a hit, and several generations of students are affected. Some of the current problems, related to quality in our higher education system, stem from bad recruitment policies and practices. Instead of trying to address these issues through rigorous and inclusive recruitment practices, we try to seek solutions via band-aids like quality assurance and workshops on curriculum writing and pedagogy for university academics.

In developing alternative recruitment policies and practices, we have to demand that the needs and expectations of individual departments are heard. Our selection panels should include more subject specialists than administrators and council nominees. Most of the evaluation should be completed before the interviews, and interviews should be treated as opportunities to get to know candidates in person and pose clarifying questions rather than as occasions for full-scale evaluation. We have to be open and receptive to new, inter-disciplinary scholarship and cultural, ethnic and gender diversity. If we are unwilling to introspect and bring about these reforms and revise our marking schemes, we will continue to recruit the wrong candidates and thereby fail our students and the wider community.

Mahendran Thiruvarangan is a Senior Lecturer attached to the Department of Linguistics & English at the University of Jaffna.

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

by Mahendran Thiruvarangan

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Rajiva wins gold and silver medals at Singapore Masters Athletics Meet‎

Masters double international Rajiva Wijetunge, who participated in his 100th athletics meet, made it a memorable one by winning gold for Shot Put and silver for Discus Throw in the 65 – 69 age category at the Singapore Masters Athletics Meet conducted at the Home of Athletics Stadium, Kallang Singapore over the weekend. With the gold and the sliver madals won by Rajiva, his international medals tally stands at 34 on his 67th birthday today (June 08).

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'I died and my deceased loved ones gave me warnings - one of these has aleady come true'

Landon Dennis says he died after a fall and overdose, and claims his soul travelled to the afterlife where he was greeted by his late grandad and niece.

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Is power devolution under JVP-NPP a political daydream?

The JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva’s recent remarks at a news conference in Jaffna where he ruled out the possibility of holding provincial council elections this year has been widely reported and widely criticized. About the same time there was another media event in Jaffna that went largely unnoticed and unreported outside Jaffna. What was said at the second media event may carry far more political implications than Tilvin Silva’s election timing talk. A veteran Tamil political participant made the startling yet not implausible statement that the prospect of having political devolution under the JVP-NPP government is becoming “a daydream”. The statement was made by Dr. K. Vigneswaran, who served as Provincial Secretary to the only North-East Provincial Council Government that was elected under the auspices of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Dr. Vigneswaran is a Professional Civil Engineer who studied at Royal College, graduated with First Class Honours in Engineering in 1964, and went on to complete a pioneering PhD at the university of Waterloo, Canada, applying the finite element method (FEM) in the field of Geotechnical Engineering. His engineering career has always been at the Irrigation Department where he rose to a Deputy Director. That was when the department was in its golden years, and Vigneswaran was known for his technical mentorship, meticulous administrative skills, and for knowing the fine print of everything. While at the Irrigation Department, Vigneswaran married Ramya de Silva, a fellow irrigation Engineer. After 1983, Vigneswaran became a fulltime political activist and a powerful resource in Tamil politics, but with unwavering commitment to nonviolence, democracy and federalism. The family moved first to India and then Canada, and Vigneswaran has been shuttling between Canada and Sri Lanka.

Devolution: Tortuous Trajectory

Since 1987, the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement, and the 13th Amendment, Vigneswaran has been a permanent fixture in all the politics and institutional dynamic of implementing 13A and establishing provincial councils. He served as Secretary to the only elected Provincial Government for the Northern and Eastern Provinces. After 1994 and the election of Chandrika Kumaratunga as President, Vigneswaran became a key participant in all the civil society efforts and government initiatives to restore the PCs and implement 13A, both during the Kumaratunga presidency and the succeeding administrations of Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo.

Devolution efforts stalled after the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who in so many words declared that he had no time for 13A or PCs in his presidential agenda, whatever it was. Only that his whole agenda turned out to be a wholesale disaster for the country. Already by then, all the nine Provincial Councils had fallen into abeyance with the cancellation of the 1988 PC elections by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo, with the TNA standing by. The abeyance continues under the JVP-NPP government with no apparent end in sight after Tilvin de Silva’s statement in Jaffna.

I say all this to provide the proper context for Vigneswaran’s statement in Jaffna that the prospects for power devolution under the JVP-NPP government are becoming a political daydream. He said something else as well: that of all the government leaders he has encountered over the years, the only leader who has been genuinely sincere about power devolution is former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, and no one else. I am constrained to add that the insincere category would include Ranil Wickremesinghe, who for all his handsome promises, never matched any of them with experiential sincerity. The present JVP-NPP government still has time to show that they are not an insincere lot.

It is not my purpose to agree with or question Dr. Vigneswaran’s assertions, but to use them as cue and context to comment on the widening mismatch between the JVP-NPP government’s promises and its practices on the matter of power devolution and the restoration of the PC system. With a stalling economy, rising prices and external shocks, it is obvious that the government has all the economic matters to worry about, but that does not mean that it can ignore all the other government responsibilities. No government is put in power to solve a single problem or address a single issue. It is in the nature of governments to deal with multiple problems with varying priorities. Otherwise you could have a single cabinet minister to deal with one problem at a time. That is never going to be the case.

The economy is of course the top of mind priority for the government even as it is a top of mind concern for the people. Even on the economic front, the government is holding steady but is showing little progress. And there are other government initiatives where political accountability will call for answers: to wit, the catchall Clean Sri Lanka programme, ambitious educational reforms, contentious energy sector reforms and, yes, power devolution as well as the overpromised constitutional reforms. Not to mention the sprawling unforced errors over substandard coal imports, foreign exchange fraud, and the chronic neglect of developing the renewable energy sector. Correcting these fields of errors may require a separate ministry for each.

Devolution: Daydream or Deliverable

On the PC system and constitutional reform, there has been scant progress in spite of handsome promises. On both, the government is inadvertently deepening the holes that it had dug itself into through indifference, inaction or procrastination, or all of them and more. In the matter of devolution and provincial councils, the government can simply defuse the situation by directing the Election Commission to conduct elections at the earliest opportunity that is logistically possible. Making his statement in Jaffna, Mr. Tilvin Silva alluded to funding shortfall and legal complications as reasons for the necessity to postpone PC elections until next year. Neither reason holds water.

The funding question would seem to have been put to rest by the statement of Health Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa, presumably reflecting cabinet consensus, that there are no funding issues and if needed additional funds could be arranged through supplementary allocations. It is also disingenuous to cite legal complications as a reason. The so called legal complications arose because of the collective stupidity of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe parliament that included the then miniscule NPP and the politically-lost TNA. The JVP-NPP has now ballooned from a handful MPs to a two-thirds majority and it can expedite any legislation that it wants to enable the PC elections to be held without delays.

Alternatively, the elections can be held under the old arrangement of proportional representation with assurance by political parties to honour their commitment to fielding more female candidates. Already at a gathering of all political parties, including the NPP (but not the JVP), and civil society groups, convened by People’s Action For Free & Fair Elections (PAFFREL), the political parties jointly committed to a 25% quota for women and youth under the old electoral system. The ongoing parliamentary committee exercise studying the legal matter, headed by the overstretched Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, is also an unnecessary red herring. The Election Commission is ready to go under whatever law or electoral system that is before it. So, there is no reason to hide behind legal complications to further delay the PC elections.

Somewhat amusingly, Public and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananda Wijepala has trotted out the argument that the NPP government has already conducted two nationwide elections during the one and a half years it has been in office, and that unlike the Ranil Wickremesinghe government the JVP-NPP is not in the business “to delay elections for our personal benefit” – whatever that means. Unfortunately, the good minister is missing the point. The question is not how many elections can the JVP-NPP hold in how many years, but how many years do people in the provinces have to wait before they vote in another provincial election? How many more years? That really is the question.

We know the current situation in the provinces. There are provincial governments but no elected provincial councils. The government administration in every province is being run by the President of the Republic through his handpicked governors and unelected government officials. This is a travesty of democracy and the euthanizing of the PC system. Already under 13A, the office of the provincial governors has been constitutionally and legally compared to the office of the Governors of old Ceylon who represented the monarch in what was then a crown colony. The irony is that a JVP-NPP President may have inadvertently positioned himself as the monarch of all he provincially surveys, courtesy of the Thirteenth Amendment!

The JVP was in the forefront of the litigation that caused the demerger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. If Dr. Vigneswaran’s assertion were to prove correct, a potential dissolution of the provincial system under the JVP-NPP government would be the consummation of the JVP’s original opposition to the introduction of the provincial council system itself. The whole system may not be eradicated, but it could be devoured of its democratic essence while preserving the administrative shell as the medium for the country’s president to overreach into the provinces. That would be worse than a daydream, a real nightmare.

by Rajan Philips

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West Indies bowl first in drizzly Kingston; Malinga, Jangoo named in XIs

West Indies won the toss and put Sri Lanka into bat in what is a must-win second ODI in Jamaica for the hosts. Sri Lanka lead the three-match series 1-0.

The toss itself was delayed by 30 minutes following rain earlier in the day, and it was the possibility of rain intervening later on that influenced Shai Hope’s decision to field first. Kusal Mendis was expecting the conditions to be tough to start with, so they will be aiming to ride that initial period out. Rain returned just moments before the first ball too.

In terms of team news, both teams have made a change each. For the West Indies it is enforced, with Matthew Forde picking up an injury and replaced by Amir Jangoo. Sri Lanka meanwhile bring in the red-hot Eshan Malinga, fresh off a breakout IPL stint, in place of Asitha Fernando.

Conditions were overcast as the toss took place, and there is a distinct possibility of rain interruption at some point during the game. As for the pitch, it’s expected to be similar to the one in the first game. Spin will play a role, while batting will likely be tough early on – mostly due to the cloudy overhead conditions – before easing up once the ball gets older.

West Indies XI:  John Campbell, Justin Greaves,  Keacy Carty,  Shai Hope (capt & wk),  Sherfane Rutherford, Roston Chase,  Amir Jangoo,  Gudakesh Motie,  Alzarri Joseph,  Shamar Joseph, Jayden Seales.

Sri Lanka XI:  Pathum Nissanka,  Kamindu Mendis,  Kusal Mendis (capt & wk),  Pavan Rathnayake,  Charith Asalanka,  Janith Liyanage,  Wanindu Hasaranga,  Milan Rathnayake,  Maheesh Theekshana,  Dushmantha Chameera,  Eshan Malinga

(Cricinfo)

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Beyond tragedy that shook the nation’s conscience

Saturday 6th June, 2026

Tuesday’s tragedy at Anguruwatota, where a fire engulfed an elders’ home, claiming 13 lives and seriously injuring several others, has shaken the conscience of the nation. Equally shocking are the allegations that the residents of the care centre had been mistreated; among them were persons with disabilities, and some of them had been restrained with chains, according to eyewitnesses. The police have said they found the charred body of a resident in chains. It has now been revealed that the care home was not registered. The question is why the authorities did not take any legal action against it.

The Director of the gutted elders’ home has been remanded and the police will press charges against him. However, the Anguruwatota tragedy is not a problem that should be addressed in isolation. It should be examined in the context of a wider socio-economic issue.

There are other elders’ homes across the country, and they number about 250, according to media reports. They are run by a mix of government institutions, provincial councils, religious organisations, NGOs, and private operators. Some of them are reportedly under-resourced, and poorly-regulated. These institutions can accommodate only a fraction of the country’s elderly population needing assistance. Most of them, however, are basic residential care facilities rather than fully developed geriatric care centres, often functioning more as shelters than as medically supported long-term care institutions, which the country badly needs.

Sri Lanka has already reached a rapidly ageing phase of its demographic transition, with the proportion of citizens above 60 years increasing. About 18 out of every 100 Sri Lankans are aged 60 or above. This proportion has risen sharply from about 12.4% in 2012. It is doubtful whether successive governments have addressed this issue adequately, much less formulated a strategy to face challenges arising from an ageing population. This shift has placed increasing pressure on many families that are struggling to make ends meet and therefore cannot provide full-time care for their elderly members and relatives. Hence the need for policymakers to intensify their focus on structured elderly care for those without family support or social security.

While action is taken to ensure that the existing elders’ homes are run properly, it is incumbent upon policymakers to devise ways and means of facing the problems associated with an ageing population. Experts have pointed out that a national elderly care strategy to address these issues need to integrate several components. First, it should strengthen community-based care models that allow elders to remain in their homes for as long as possible, supported by home visits, mobile health services, and social workers. Second, it should develop a graded system of care homes, ranging from basic shelters to medically supported nursing facilities, all under proper regulatory supervision. It was a chronic lack of oversight and poor regulation that led to the Anguruwatota tragedy. Third, local government authorities should be formally involved in identifying vulnerable elders, coordinating welfare benefits, and ensuring minimum care standards at community level. Fourth, financial protection mechanisms such as social pensions, subsidised care, and public-private partnerships should be expanded to reduce the burden on low-income families.

It is hoped that Tuesday’s tragedy will jolt politicians and policymakers into addressing the long-felt need for a coherent national strategy to enable the elderly to spend their twilight years in comfort and dignity.

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Wendy Gledhill breaks silence after son charged with murder of Top Gun actor

James Handy was a Hollywood actor known for his roles in films such as Top Gun: Maverick, Jumanji, Arachnophobia, Unbreakable and Logan.

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