Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, in The Daily Mirror,22 October 2012, where the title runs: “The Myth of Free Education”
The Federation of University Teachers’ Association (FUTA) and the Inter University Students’ Federation (IUSF) in Sri Lanka have been on a long campaign to “protect free education”. I will be dealing with both the semantics and substance of “free education” in Sri Lanka in this think piece. The fundamental truth is that NOTHING IS FREE IN THE WORLD of human beings. Every single citizen of Sri Lanka pays several taxes to the government for the provision of public goods (for e.g.infrastructure) and services (for e.g. education, health). Since between 70-75% of the
total revenue of the government accrues from indirect (consumption) taxes every single citizen pays various taxes to the government daily
during their entire lifetime. Therefore, every household pays for the education of their children albeit indirectly through the payment of
direct (income) and indirect taxes to the government. Besides, there is rampant corruption in admissions to popular schools throughout Sri Lanka which makes a mockery of the free education system because of payment of bribe to secure admission. In addition, almost all the parents pay to send their children to private tutories from grade one onwards because most schools in the country hardly teach anything worthwhile despite being nominally free-of-cost. Continue reading
But there is one economic indicator that has remained consistently negative since well before 2008- global youth unemployment. This is arguably one of the most important indicators of all given the fact that, historically speaking, high youth unemployment has always been a harbinger of revolution; just ask the Hosni Mubarak or any other politician on the wrong side of the Arab Spring. 
