Colombo varsity de-listing spurs need for upgrading

New measures will be taken to upgrade the status of the universities after Colombo University was de-listed from the top 100 universities in Asia, UGC Chairman Prof. Gamini Samaranayake said. The ranking was conducted by Asiaweek magazine and Colombo University which was placed 77th in the Best Universities of Asia list in 2000 is not among the top 100 universities now.
“We plan to upgrade the status of the universities and bring at least Colombo University back to its former status,” Prof. Samaranayake said.

He said the best way to promote the status of universities was to make them compete with each other so we thought of having a local ranking system. The criteria used for international ranking would be used to rank state universities in the local ranking system, Prof. Samaranayake said.

“The quality and the quantity of researches conducted in the university, the contribution of the academics in the universities to internationally famous journals and the outputs of the researches conducted are some of the guidelines we are hoping to use. Though at the international level, winning the Nobel Prize too counts positive marks, we are not yet in a status to apply such standards yet,” he said. Colombo University Vice Chancellor Prof. T. Hettiarachchi said the reason for Colombo University getting de-listed from the top 100 universities in Asia was that the authorities did not concentrate on the criteria with which universities were ranked.

“We are trying to upgrade ourselves so that in future, we may have a chance of getting included in the list. For that, we can’t totally depend on Government funding as it becomes less and less every year. We can’t blame the Government either because its military expenditure is high,” he said.