By Isuri Kaviratne
A group of 283 students who were looking forward to furthering their studies at university have had a rude shock when a 10-year-old law regulating admissions to university was suddenly revived, leaving these students “stranded” and dashing their academic hopes. A hitherto unimplemented government rule about not allowing a student to apply for admission to more than one state-run tertiary-level educational institution has left 283 students in the lurch, including students who had qualified to enter the medical faculties of local universities.
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| Disappointed and angry tertiary-level students protest at UGC headquarters. |
The majority of the 283 disappointed students are registered with the Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education (SLIATE), while the others are registered with institutions that come under the purview of the Ministry of Higher Education.
Students who had registered with the SLIATE to follow the Higher National Diploma (HND) course say they had had no advance warning that such a step would be taken. They said that even the SLIATE directors were taken by surprise by the policy. The students said the directors of the various SLIATE branches had confirmed that registration with the institute was not an obstacle to admission to university. Speaking to The Sunday Times, several of the concerned students said they had registered with the SLIATE in December last year because of the delayed release of their Advanced Level examination (A/L) results, following a boycott by teachers assigned to mark A/L papers in 2007.
Under the ruling, no students registered with the SLIATE, even those who have passed the A/L on their first attempt, are eligible to enter a university in future. According to the University Grants Commission (UGC) handbook, students who are already registered with a government non-university tertiary education institute would not be accepted by universities.
Udul Premarathne, convenor of the Inter-University Students Federation, which had organised a protest in front of the UGC premises on Thursday, said the majority of the 283 students were from remote areas of the country, and that they had enrolled with the SLIATE to follow an English diploma course to improve their language skills before going to university. According to Mr. Premarathne, the hitherto unimplemented admissions policy was introduced in 1998 to limit students to not more than one tertiary-level education opportunity with a government institution.
“The law to prevent one person from seizing more than one higher education opportunity with the government is a sound one, but to suddenly revive that law without prior warning is very unfair,” he said. “These students have lost a life-time opportunity.”
Badulla-based Dinusha Sanjeewani Dissanayake, who studied at the Badulla Visakha Vidyalaya, signed up with the Badulla branch of the SLIATE to follow the Higher National Diploma (HND) in English to improve her English before entering medical college. She too is a victim of last year’s delayed A/L results. She had sat for her A/Ls in 2006, and because her score fell short of the minimum for university admission, she took the exam again the following year. “The A/L results came out on January 1, 2008, and I had a good enough Z-score to enter the Faculty of Medicine,” Ms. Dissanayake said.
However, after referring to the UGC handbook, she decided to cancel her SLIATE registration before applying to the university. Nevertheless, she received a letter from the UGC saying her university application had been rejected because she was already registered with the SLIATE.“I have sent an appeal to the UGC,” she said.
Ms. Dissanayake pointed out that her Z-score was 1.7939, above the Badulla District Medical College cut-off mark of 1.5891, and that her district ranking was 21. “Only two students from our school have been selected to join the medical faculty,” she said.
Ms. Dissanayake said she was very disappointed with the way her application had been rejected. She said her father, a farmer, was the breadwinner in the family, and that the whole family had been pinning their hopes on her entering the medical college and eventually qualifying as a doctor. Veyangoda-based Chathura Madushanka, a student of Veyangoda Bandaranayake Central, also took his A/Ls in 2006, and then again in 2007. His Z-score was 1.6616, and he was confident of gaining admission to university to study business management or for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. However, because of the A/L results delay, he registered with the SLIATE to follow a HND in Accountancy. On receiving his A/L results on January 1, he decided to cancel his registration, which he did on January 10.
Like Ms. Dissanayake, Mr. Madushanka cancelled his SLIATE registration and then applied to the university. “At that point I had not attended a single HND lecture. But now I have lost both the university opportunity and the SLIATE opportunity,” he said.
Meanwhile, SLIATE deputy director, general administration, M. M. Nayeemudeen said the SLIATE had informed the UGC that these students had cancelled their SLIATE registrations at the time of their university applications. “However, the UGC has decided to strictly implement the law this year, and there is nothing the SLIATE can do about it,” he said.
UGC chairman Professor Gamini Samaranayake declined to comment on the issue, but said a board of appeal had been set up to look into the matter. Malene Peiris, Secretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, told The Sunday Times that the ministry set the rules for university admissions, and that the UGC implemented these rules. She said she could not comment on the matter in question, but said she had asked for a report on the matter. “This law had been implemented before, but there was no case of student victimisation, as has happened on this occasion,” she said.
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