Expand varsity education facilities -UGC chairman

by L.S. Ananda WEDAARACHCHI

While improving the quality of university education in Sri Lanka the facilities for university education which are limited to 22,000 admissions to 14 State universities annually must be expanded, said UGC chairman Prof. Gamini Samaranayake.

“India is becoming the world university centre and Sri Lanka should be the regional centre.

The time has come to look in to the university education system with an open mind, he said.

He said that 130,000 Advanced Level students qualified for university admission last year of the 250,000 who sat the Advanced Level examination.

Fifty-thousand students who qualified had applied for admission to universities this year he said.

“The global trend of university education is now a cross border trend-where students go abroad for their university studies. It is estimated that 2.6 million students are following degree programs outside their countries. One-hundred-and-fifty-thousand Indian students are now studying in foreign universities and India spends US$ 4 billion for them annually. Eighty-thousand Indian students are studying in Australia”.

The situation is similar in other countries such as UK, USA, China and Japan. In this situation, leading universities in Australia, UK, USA and Japan have opened their campuses and franchised universities outside their borders in keeping with the world trend, he said.

He said that 145 countries have signed the WTO - GATT agreement and Sri Lanka too is a signatory. Foreign countries can set up branches or franchised centres outside their borders to develop university education.

Accordingly Sri Lanka can accept the request of leading international universities to set up campuses and franchised centres is Sri Lanka, he said. The UGC is very keen to approve only qualified and reputed universities which come under the Commonwealth Year Book and International Hand Book to allow them to set up centres in Sri Lanka, he said.