Financial Times

Royal Institute’s social responsibility initiative
The Royal Institute of Colombo (RIC) with its extensive development research arm plans to make a valuable social contribution to the national development of the country, the institute said.

In a statement it said:
The Royal Institute of Colombo is the “higher education and development research” arm of Royal Institute – a premier English-medium private educational institute established in 1971. It commenced the Degree Division with the launch of the Degree Programme of the University of London in 1990.
The establishment of the RIC was undertaken as part of the expansion process of the Royal Institute group by recognizing first, the need for upgrading the Degree Division to an Institute devoted to higher education and secondly, the need for developing the higher education component through its interrelationship with development research.

Today, the RIC is a fully pledged private higher educational institute with a development research arm and is managed under the guidance and directives of an Academic Board of Management (ABM). The ABM consists of a group of eminent academics and professionals in Sri Lanka. The vision of the RIC is to be a centre of excellence in higher education and development research in Sri Lanka.

The institute strives to produce graduates, diplomates and, other higher qualification holders with international competence in academic knowledge, soft skills and positive attitudes and to promote social and economic development research in contributing to development knowledge and policy. As of now, there are about 650 undergraduate students at the RIC studying for the BSc and LLB degrees and diplomas leading to degrees, conferred by the University of London.

The RIC offers teaching for degrees in the areas of Accounting, Banking, Business, Information Systems, Economics, Finance, Law, Management, Mathematics and Sociology. With the ‘Permission of the University of London’, it also offers teaching for diplomas leading to the above degrees, while these diplomas are considered by the University of London as equivalent to the First Year of the respective degree courses. In the past few years, the RIC has produced excellent results with over 90 per cent pass rate at the final examinations conducted by the University of London. These graduates are also highly competitive in the job market nationally as well as internationally.

The RIC is the place for Sri Lankan students to graduate with a BSc or LLB degree conferred by the University of London at a moderate cost as low as 10 per cent of what is spent by a student in London to complete the same degree. The RIC is now setting the groundwork to improve further the quality of its higher education with the support of development research as well as to expand it for reaching the lower social strata.

As a non-profit organization, the research wing of the RIC – the Centre for Development Research (CDR) – was inaugurated in June 2005. With the support of a group of Senior Research Fellows and Advisors, the CDR is conceived as a centre of excellence in promoting development-oriented research of relevance for the social and economic advancement of Sri Lanka.

On the part of research, the CDR focuses on regional development studies, disaster mitigation and management studies, social and community studies and, economic sectoral studies. Recently, the CDR was involved in conducting the Regional Convention on Policy Reforms for Small and Medium Enterprise Development in the SAARC countries in collaboration with the Federation of the Chambers of Commerce and Industries in Sri Lanka (FCCISL) and the SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Higher education and research are two sides of the same coin and reinforces each other. The CDR expects to provide its research inputs to the development of higher education of the RIC. Also the academic staff and undergraduate students of the RIC will have an opportunity to engage in research.

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