New means of expanding higher education in Sri Lanka

Undoubtedly, free education has been the most incommensurable blessing that Sri Lankan children have had since independence. However, it has had serious limitations when it comes to offering tertiary education to a large number of students.

Currently, free education based higher educational opportunities are available only to 15% of GCE A/L qualified students, which amount to approximately 3% of the age cohort. Due to limited higher educational opportunities available through free education, many of our students opt to enrol in degree programmes offered by foreign educational institutes, thus creating a huge drain in billions of rupees from the country.

This avenue for higher education is open only for a very small group of financially affluent children in the country. It is also seen that many of the students graduating through such programmes tend to migrate to other countries rather than contribute to the development of the nation.

As such, expanding higher educational opportunities for our young generation, overcoming the limitations and supplementing the free education system, has become a matter of utmost importance to the nation.

It is time now to revisit and learn lessons from the past and develop a better model for expanding the higher educational opportunities in the country. Among other institutions, the University of Moratuwa has always been responsive to national needs, expanding its internal intake multifold over the last many years. In keeping with this philosophy, being a proactive partner in national development, the University of Moratuwa has now decided to offer its highly recognised degree programmes through Open and Distance Learning mode to expand higher education opportunities in the country. As a first step, the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Moratuwa has now announced the Degree of Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT), offered in the Open and Distance Learning mode.

This programme has been supported by the Asian Development Bank funded Distance Education Modernization Project (DEMP) of the Ministry of Education. While the students may follow the programme on their own, through the Open and Distance Learning mode, the University will also identify partner institutions to offer the BIT degree programme.

The university is in the process of forming partnerships for collaborative provision with the private sector IT educational institutes which already have experience in offering degree level programmes in collaboration with foreign universities.

Programme in Brief
The BIT@UoM.LK differs from other models of Distance Education in Sri Lanka in many ways.
At the outset, BIT at Moratuwa has been designed not only to target the IT industry requirements, but also to produce IT experts to meet the demand for IT professionals by other industries, and to establish career paths for postgraduate qualified academia in IT to ensure the continuous production of quality IT graduates.

The BIT at Moratuwa is a three year degree programme having multiple-entry and multiple-exit facility with certificate, diploma and degree qualifications at the end of Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 respectively. It will accept students with three GCE (A/L) passes regardless of the stream, and those who have equivalent qualifications. The quality and the relevance of the degree programme have been enhanced by the inclusion of multidisciplinary courses such as Accountancy, Business Studies, Management, Communication Skills, Bio-Informatics and Social Aspects of IT into the BIT curricular.

Pedagogy
The pedagogical basis of BIT at Moratuwa is unique in the Sri Lankan Open and Distance Learning arena. It goes beyond the traditional Open University model, which is based on concepts such as Aim, Objectives, Body of Knowledge (mainly text-based), Assignments and Examination. The BIT at Moratuwa also ensures learner support beyond traditional Open University concepts such as Orientation, Day Schools, Tutor Clinics, etc.