Communicative Action for Reforming University Education: Comments from a Sri Lankan Case Study

There is an urgent need for a new wave of learning that will transform university education through communicative action. Open discourse, by concentrating on values, feelings, fears, and hopes, enables a trusting basis for critical and problem-and-solution discussions. Dominated by an instrumental type of rationality, the existing dominant paradigm of university education is becoming progressively coercive and destructive of student and collegial life-worlds. Communicative action, through open discourse between universities, governments, and business, could lead to increasing transnational openness. Can developed countries play a role in this process without dominating and destroying university life-worlds in developing countries?