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Investing for a Better Future of

SRI LANKA

01 Investing for a Better Future of Sri Lanka Page 02

02 Transforming Sri Lanka Page 03

03 Identified Gap Page 04

04 Establishing of Sri Lanka Technological Campus Page 05

05 First-of-its-Kind Page 07- 08

06 Strength of Global Partners Page 09 - 10

07 Initial Stages of the Partnership Page 11

08 Areas of Specialization Page 11

09 Mutually Beneficial Collaboration Page 12

10 As an Educational Center in Asia Page 12

11 New Zealand Qualifications Framework Page 13

12 The way forward Page 14

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

- Nelson Mandela -

01

Investing for a Better Future of Sri Lanka With a history of universal free education and an educated man power base Sri Lanka is aiming to achieve a goal of USD 5 billion from IT/Software businesses (SLASSCOM, 2020 plan) by engaging with other ground breaking technological entities.

02

Transforming Sri Lanka After ending a 30 year struggle to eradicate armed internal terrorism, Sri Lanka has entered into a stage of transformation. Communal harmony is unifying the society to progress for a better and brighter future. The country is evolving around the concept of a knowledge based economy.

With this objective, the GoSL has initiated multiple educational opportunities for local students.

Despite all these efforts, many students are still missing out the prospects of becoming skilled graduates due to the limited opportunities provided by government run universities.

This trend has been continued for last few years as revealed in Table 1.

Only 12% of the total number of students who sat for the A/L examination during the last few years have been able to secure seats in a local universities.

2009

2010

2011

2012

NO. THAT SAT FOR EXAM

205,249

233,609

239,744

229,737

NO. SELECTED TO UNIVERSITY

125,284

142,516

141,411

144,816

21,547

22,016

28,908

24,198

YEAR OF A LEVEL EXAM

NO. SATISFYING MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR ADMISSION

Table 1: Students entry to government universities against the number who sat the G.C.E (A/L) Examination since 2009.

50 100

225

225

225

MRT

PDN

RUH

SEUSL

UJA

As shown in Chart 1, only a small group of 1500 students are being selected for the engineering degree programmes in the state universities (ie, Moratuwa (MRT), Peradeniya (PDN), Ruhuna(RUH), South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (SEUSL), ‌‌.(University of Jaffna). Even though the government has introduced a Technological Stream to the G.C.E A/L Examinations, only a limited number of students could be admitted to the state universities to follow degree programmes in respective pathways.

03

Identified Gap Despite the limited resource availability in state universities for students seeking entry to engineering and technological degree programmes, Sri Lankan economy is heavily dependent on the skilled employees with a solid knowledge and a skill set from the engineering and technological streams.

Table X shows that the majority of the Sri Lankan labour force is deployed in Agriculture, Fisheries, Manufacturing and Construction, Mining & Quarrying, Electricity, Gas and Water supply industries.

INDUSTRIAL GROUPS

% Share of Employment by Industrial Group

AGRICULTURE AND FISHERY INDUSTRY

30.7

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

18.5

CONSTRUCTION, MINING & QUARRYING, ELECTRICITY, GAS AND WATER SUPPLYING

8.1

Table X: The Quarterly Labour Force Survey : Conducted by the Department of Census & Statistics of Sri Lanka.

04

Establishing of Sri Lanka Technological Campus In order to contribute towards a widely felt need of the domestic economy, Sri Lanka Telecom plc (SLT) who is serving as the national telecom service provider with majority shares held by GoSL (the market capitalisation as at 31st December 2015 exceeded Rs.84 billion), ventured into the higher education sector in Sri Lanka with the intent of fulfilling its social responsibilities by establishing the Sri Lanka Technological Campus (“SLT Campus (Pvt) Ltd” or “SLTC”).

SLT’s strong corporate health is underscored by being awarded a National Long Term Rating of AAA (lka) and a BB- rating on Long Term Local Currency and Foreign Currency by Fitch Ratings, followed by B+ Local and Foreign Currency credit rating by Standard & Poor’s.

SLTC was ceremonially opened by His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena, the President of Sri Lanka on 24th April 2015. By establishing an Engineering/Technological School as its first step, SLTC intends to cater to both local and international students who aspire to become Engineers and Technologists. Currently SLTC offers 4-year Engineering Degree programmes.

These degree programmes allow student to specialize in following major areas: a. Electronics and Power System Engineering b. Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering c. Electronics Engineering and Engineering Management In addition to the engineering degree programmes, SLTC is already in the process of offering degrees that have a base in the Technological streams. In addition to the traditional courses such as Electronic Technology, Mechatronic Technology, Electrical Technology and Telecommunication Technology, SLTC will offer the degree programmes that directly cater to the fields of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Dairy Enterprises.

SLTC also plans to establish a Business School by 2018 in order to address the increasing demand for business management degrees. Apart from the undergraduate programmes, SLTC has also established a Postgraduate Research Unit (PGRU) from its inception to foster a research based academic culture.

05

06

First-of-its-Kind SLTC would be the first university in Sri Lanka that would be powered by an industrial giant.

SLTC has carefully studied the success story of Multimedia University, which is Malaysia’s first private university. In 1994, Telekom Malaysia Berhad, the largest telecommunications company in Malaysia, established the above-mentioned university as the Institute of Telecommunication and Information Technology (ITTM) in Taiping, Perak. Later they were awarded the university status and the University was rebranded as Multimedia University and this was due to the strong relationship with Malaysia’s high-tech research and industrial area, Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). A similar strong relationship between industries and universities are evident with the relationship Stanford University shares with the Silicon Valley.

07

The ongoing operations of SLTC are taking place at the scenic 36 acre land in Padukka which housed the obsolete SLT’s Satellite Earth Station. Once decommissioned from its services, the existing infrastructure has been immensely improved to facilitate the academic programme of SLTC. In the meantime SLTC is in the process of constructing the state of the art building facilities for accommodating more than a student cohort of 2000 by 2020.

A secondary City Campus has also been established at TRACE Expert City in Maradana, Colombo 10, Sri Lanka for administrative functions such as student registration.

08

Strength of Global Partners SLTC is keenly looking forward to partner with the Universities in New Zealand for establishing multidimensional partnerships which involve research and industry engagement as well as teaching and learning. SLT’s connection and access to the telecommunication industry will be an important aspect in these collaborations.

09

Considering the common attributes between the two countries such as being island nations, heavy dependencies on agricultural, aquacultural and dairy industries, it is also identified that New Zealand is a country that leads in the following areas and industries: Leading Agricultural manufacturer in the World Leader in the dairy enterprise Access to the aquacultural industry Exceptional focus to the higher education sector and access to High rank universities

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Initial Stages of the Partnership During the initial stages of the partnership, SLTC will exploit the opportunities of offering joint degree programmes.

Joint degree programmes: Allow students transfer credits between SLTC and New Zealand Universities so that they can spend, for example, two years at SLTC and two years at a designated New Zealand University allowing them to complete a 4-year degree programmes.

Areas of Specialization Going beyond the traditional degree programmes, SLTC looks forward to jointly offer degree programmes in the fields of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Dairy Enterprise. Such programmes would produce Agricultural Technologists, Environmental Research Scientist (Water Quality Analyst), Biotechnologist (Genetics Scientist) ,Life Scientist (Animal Scientist or Bioinformatics)

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Mutually Beneficial Collaboration The graduates of the above mentioned degree programmes should be able to contribute to the economies of both countries. As listed in the table X, over a 30% of employment opportunities are generated in the Agriculture and Fishery Industries. Under such circumstances, graduates from the said degree programmes will be able to directly contribute to the Sri Lankan work force. In addition, the above stated job roles are identified by the Immigration New Zealand in the Long Term Skill Shortage List.

In certain scenarios, SLTC should be able to facilitate New Zealand students to complete their degree programmes in Sri Lanka. Such arrangement would definitely allow those students to gather unique experience and exposure that is pertaining to the Agricultural and Fisheries Industries in tropical countries. Study Abroad programmes will also assist the partnering New Zealand universities to obtain a much needed diversification in their student population.

As an Educational Center in Asia Taking the advantage of strategic positioning in the indian ocean, SLTC is intending to attract students from African and South East Asian countries. In such a setup, SLTC should be able to get an advantage by offering modern degree programmes from the world class universities in New Zealand.

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New Zealand Qualifications Framework Furthermore, SLTC is quite keen to promote the New Zealand Qualifications Framework (NZQF) in Sri Lanka and also in the region by acting as a facilitating body for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA). SLTC believes that promoting of NZQF will allow students and skilled workers to map their locally acquired qualifications with the New Zealand Qualifications.

Such mapping would be mutually beneficial for all the stakeholders as; Students can easily enter into the New Zealand universities for continuing their study programmes.

Skilled workers will have clear understanding about their qualifications during the process of entering into the New Zealand labour market.

SLTC would be able to position itself in Sri Lanka as the Gateway to the New Zealand and their study programmes.

The government backing to the SLTC will have an indirect impact towards the acceptance of NZQF among the Sri Lankan societies.

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The way forward Furthermore, SLTC would exploit the opportunities of activating the following activities jointly with New Zealand Universities. a. Faculty exchanges: Academic staff, research scholars, administrators and student (graduate and undergraduate) exchanges. b. Active research collaborations: Projects leading to publications, research proposals and student training. c. Exchange of information: Materials for publications, education and research projects. d. Holding Of events: Events such as conferences, seminars, symposia and lectures via webinars and/or teleconferencing and organizing such events in Sri Lanka jointly with New Zealand Universities.

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