APIIT - Sri Lanka, the leading private higher education institute in the country, has announced the setting up of a modern law school in Colombo to offer internal British degrees in Law. The APIIT Law School will be inaugurated in August 2009 and the first internal degree programme, LLB (Hons) from Staffordshire University, UK, will commence in September 2009. For the first time in Sri Lanka, students will have the opportunity to study for an internal law degree from a prestigious British University.
The overarching goal of the APIIT Law School is to help meet the increasing demand for legal education in the country and contribute to the advancement of the legal profession.

Sri Lanka's free education policies introduced in the 1940's has contributed to giving access and educational opportunity at primary and secondary level to all Sri Lankan children. However, the state's investment in primary and secondary education has not been matched with adequate resources for the tertiary education sector. This has resulted in a large number of students completing the primary and secondary education successfully only to face a severe bottleneck in entry to tertiary education. Although the primary enrolment rate is almost 100%, enrolment at higher education is only about 3% of an age cohort.

With the adoption of a free economic policy by the state in 1978 and the consequent rapid expansion of the private sector, the demand for quality personnel shot up. The inability of the state universities to meet the increasing demand for higher education on the one hand and provide quality manpower demanded by the industry on the other created a compelling need for the emergence of private higher education in Sri Lanka. The government taking a far-sighted view encouraged the growth of private higher education particularly in IT and Management. Presently, a number of private higher education institutions offer degree level education with foreign collaboration mostly in the fields of Computing/ IT and Business Management.

Legal education has always had a private dimension because of the recognition given to the private Law College. Despite this and a big demand for legal education, there are no private higher education institutions offering internal law degree programmes of international repute. In this context, establishment of the APIIT Law School marks a defining moment in legal education.

Given the large pool of students who are excluded from the tertiary education system, there is ample opportunity to offer new courses in law. Since admission to the local institutions offering legal education in Sri Lanka is restricted, a significant number of Sri Lankans who have the financial resources go abroad annually for legal education. There are many more who cannot afford the prohibitive cost of higher education abroad but would be happy to enrol in private higher education institutions locally. Law degrees from reputed foreign universities would be most attractive to these students.

Sri Lanka has a high rate of unemployment. A British degree in Law would make a person competitive in the labour market and give the training and background valued by employers in the private sector both at recruitment and promotion. Since the holder of a British law degree can qualify as a lawyer, the alternative career path of legal practice is always available. A top-quality British degree would therefore be attractive to persons who wish to practise as lawyers or pursue a career in the corporate sector.
The cost of private education does not necessarily act as a disincentive since a legal education in Sri Lanka has been constantly viewed as facilitating upward career mobility in formal employment, and a career in local government or national politics. Lawyers are also placed high in the hierarchy of social status.

APIIT Law School will also be in a position to attract students from other countries in the region such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives, which have still to establish accessible high quality tertiary education institutions.

Partly due to the historical relations between Sri Lanka and UK, Sri Lankans have always had a high regard for the British education system. British higher education is perceived as the best in the world and it would be the dream of many a parent to provide their children with a British qualification. This provides an ideal setting for the introduction of Staffordshire University Law School programmes in Sri Lanka.

The APIIT - Sri Lanka's initiative in setting up a modern law school to offer internal British degrees in Law with a view to expanding opportunities for legal education in the country is timely. While contributing to the advancement of the legal profession, the value of this initiative in the development of human resources for a wide variety of sectors should not be underestimated.