July 1, 2013, 9:32 pm


By Dasun Edirisinghe


The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) yesterday said that all students who qualified at the GCE (Advanced Level) examination need not enter a university for higher education, but they should be trained in professions which the country needs in terms of human resources.


Commenting on Minister S. B. Dissanayake’s statement that establishing private universities would enable all A/L qualifiers to do higher education, FUTA President Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri said the minister could not justify setting up of private universities here as a solution to limited capacities in existing state universities.




Minister Dissanayake expected to enroll all those who lost the opportunity to get admitted to state institutions of higher learning to private universities, but poor students would not be able to afford the exorbitant fees charged by them, Dr. Dewasiri said.


"Among those 100,000 students who failed to get admitted to a university, most were lower middle class or poor students," he said adding that how they could afford those high fees demanded by private universities was the biggest question.


Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake recently said that annually more than 100,000 students were deprived an opportunity to have a higher education due


to limited facilities in Sri Lankan state-run universities. The government could accommodate only 25,000 students in the existing universities, but 140,000 students qualified for university entry every year.


Dr. Dewasiri said that private universities could not serve the purpose which conventional state–run universities were doing at the moment.


"Today there is no demand for university education, but there is a market for degrees," he said adding that Minister Dissanayake wanted to compromise the university education for market demand.


For example, Dr. Dewasiri said, Sri Lanka suffers from a teacher shortage, but there were not enough teacher training colleges to train teachers.


He said that a teacher could be produced in two years, but A/L qualifiers wasted their time – three to four years - in universities while there was a severe teacher shortage in the country.


Dr. Dewasiri said the other thing was universities were research based institutions, but almost all private universities who offer to set up their branches here focused on basic degrees.


"This is a business," he said adding that the minister too had paved the way for that business of selling degrees.

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