Expanding Tertiary Education Critical to Sri Lanka’s ‘Knowledge Hub’ Aspirations
Each year 100,000 qualified students have to abandon their ambitions to enter university. Less than 4% of 20-24 year olds in Sri Lanka are enrolled in a university. As Sri Lanka’s aims to grow as a knowledge-based economy and become a ‘Knowledge Hub’ for the region, these numbers are concerning. Meanwhile, the debate on permitting private universities continues apace. A Bill to permit private universities was about to be presented by the government to Parliament, but was subsequently shelved, under pressure from certain student and teacher groups. In this article, Priyanka Jayawardena presents the key arguments put forward and opens them out for wider debate.
Korea Calling: Results from a Snap Survey of Job Seekers and Issues of Youth Unemployment
> By Anushka Wijesinha (Research Economist), Roshini Jayaweera (Research Officer), Nethmini Perera (Research Assistant) and Nisha Arunatilleke (Research Fellow) – IPS Over 4,000 youth gathered along Havelock Road near the Police Field Force Headquarters on Monday to apply for jobs …
Budget 2011: Preliminary Observations on Proposals for Improving Education
> The IPS research staff held an in-house discussion last week on the various proposals forwarded by the Budget 2011. This is the third in the series of posts containing some preliminary observations of the IPS researchers, and discusses the …
Revitalizing Sri Lanka’s Tertiary Education – The Need to Involve the Private Sector
> By Nisha Arunatilake, Research Fellow – IPS In a bid to improve the quality of India’s higher education sector and to cater to a growing demand for skilled workers (consequent to the rapid economic development), in late March …
The Sri Lankan Economy in the New Decade: What are the Policy Priorities?
The last decade was one of significant challenges for the Sri Lankan economy. It began with the economic contraction of 2001 (1.5% GDP contraction), following drought, terrorist attacks, the tsunami in December 2004, and finally, the global financial and economic …
Demystifying Hawala/Undiyal – The Not So Dismal Science:[…] believed that informal fund transfer operations in Sri Lanka have expanded considerably due to the wide gap between the…