by Dasun Edirisinghe
Advanced Technological Institutes in the country would be gazetted as degree awarding institutions soon, Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake said.
All the ATI’s would be upgraded with necessary facilities to enable them to function as degree conferring higher education institutes, the minister said adding that initiatives had already been taken to change the medium of instructions in those institutes from Sinhala and Tamil to English.
Minister Dissanayake said that the government expects to recruit foreign students too to the ATIs. The ministry would introduce new courses to the ATIs in parallel to granting them degree awarding status. He said that they would expand the course duration from two years to three years in ATIs.
At present only 20 per cent from those who qualify at the GCE (A/L) examination entered the Science stream courses in the universities and 50 per cent for Art stream courses. The reset for any other courses, Dissanayake said.
According to ministry statistics, there were 40,000 students who sought tertiary education but a large number was shut out as the university system could accommodate limited only a limited number of students per year, he said.
Therefore, the ministry had to provide higher education opportunities for them.
"We have also received reports about several ragging incidents from the ATIs around the country," Dissanayake said adding the ministry had to take tough decisions to stop inhuman ragging in ATIs.
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