Higher National Diploma in English, least in demand, laments SB

June 17, 2012, 9:37 pm , the island


by Dasun Edrisinghe

Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake says that of all national diplomas offered by the Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education (SLIATE), the Higher National Diploma in English has the lowest demand in the local job market.

Addressing the launching ceremony of a two-day workshop on setting up a strategic management system for SLIATE held in Colombo last week, the minister said the HND in English had been relegated to such a lower state owing to several reasons including the inability and lack of competence of the diploma holders who passed out from nine out of 12 Advanced Technological Institutes (ATI) in the country.

He said that courses of study had not been able to produce persons capable of catering to the needs of the job market.

The Minister pointed out that there were 27 private higher educational institutes conducting English medium diplomas in disciplines offered by the SLIATE. Unless SLIATE moved from offering only Sinhala and Tamil medium courses of study to English, their relevance would be lost in the job market.