ICSLS 2005

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Encouraging Entrepreneurship Education and Development in Jaffna District
(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Sivaskaran, T.
Entrepreneurship contributes to the economy of a community in many ways. For the society and communities, entrepreneurship provides the means for achieving the level of diversity, innovation and independent decision-making required for the survival, development and freedom. Entrepreneurship education is becoming a component of new economic strategies for fostering job creation. The outcome of entrepreneurship education is emergence of a new generation of entrepreneurs who create jobs not only for themselves, but also for others. Jaffna is part of Sri Lanka which is highly affected by war for the last twenty years. The one and the only environment opened for youngsters is educational environment. After finishing their education they expect job opportunities from the government. This suggests that there is an urgent and growing need to develop more indigenous enterprises primarily to provide more employment opportunities for the young people. The present study was conducted taking randomly selected 100 graduates and 100 dropout students in Advance Level classes to examine to what extent they have an idea to start a new business rather than searching a job in the government sector. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire and were analysed simple ratio analysis. The findings indicate that the problem youngsters who live in Jaffna face is unemployment. So, increased efforts and support to foster entrepreneurship education and development are certainly important solutions to help overcome this problem.
A Theoretical Foundation to Foster the University Education System in Sri Lanka; Pragmatic Approach to Evacuate the Age-old Gap
(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Ratnayake, B.R.M.N.; Kumara, K.H.H.
Despite the fact that one pivotal role of the university education system in Sri Lanka is to fabricate proficient graduates as per the expectations by both private and public sector organisations meeting their competent criteria, we experience situations of large number of graduates bear with unemployment for a long period of time. One most recent remedy taken up by the government in this direction is to employ 40,000 unemployed graduates. The recurring issue of unemployment, under-employment and a variety of precautions taken by different authorities to the resolve the above, hints that the current university education system has not been able to cater to the needs of the society to a greater extent. The problem of this study is to formulate a mechanism to minimise the above by suggesting a framework based on reforming curriculum design. The objective of this study is to propose a theoretical framework for the university education where the expected knowledge, skills and attitudes can be acquired to meet the industry requirements reducing the age-old gap. The model is devised by constructively aligning the curriculum; learning outcomes, teaching learning: activities and assessments addressing to three domains of learning; cognitive, affective and psychomotor. In each domain, the curriculum is designed assigning lower levels of a taxonomy in the preliminary years of the degree programme and progressively directing to higher levels of the taxonomy at the higher levels the degree programme. Also within each level, objectives, teaching, learning and assessment is constructively aligned. In conclusion, adaptation of this theoretical framework to design the curriculum will be a milestone in the university system in Sri Lanka to evaluate the age- old gap and meet the industrial demand successfully.
Skills Mismatch Hypothesis and its Relevance in Explaining the Current Unemployment in Sri Lanka
(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Patabendige, A.J.
Unemployment in Sri Lanka throughout the last few decades has been extremely high compared with those in most of the countries in the Asian region, which have been following open market policies similar to Sri Lanka. In analyzing the unemployment problem ‘skills mismatch’ hypothesis, first articulated by the ILO Mission to Sri Lanka in 1971, is still highly influential. Those who stress the orthodox view of the mismatch hypothesis believe implicitly that although the economy has employment opportunities, jobs expected by a large amount of job seekers are not adequately found or they do not fit into the prevailing jobs. Particularly the private sector business leaders ascribe this mismatch primarily to the weakness of the educational structure of the country. However, new evidence appears to believe that rigour of mismatch hypothesis has faded away. In this setting, this paper aims at challenging the majority view that mismatch is responsible rather than the lack of employment generation in the economy to appear a high level of unemployment in the country. The paper, mainly depending on various sources of secondary data, found that the mismatch hypothesis is still relevant in some areas. Accordingly: i) a high percentage of the unemployed desire employment in professional, technical and clerical occupations although in the current employment profile these three categories comprise only a lesser percentage of all the employed; ii) the analysis of the profile of expectation reveals that expectations for higher level jobs rise with increasing education; and iii) long-term unemployment is most conspicuous among those who have obtained higher educational qualifications. Contrary to the majority view, it is found that i) unemployment in all educational levels shows a considerable decline with nearly the same rates over the years; ii) the unemployment rate of females throughout the past period shows a faster declining; iii) the university education system, particularly in the last decade or so, has been geared to give more skills to graduates; and iv) the employment creation by the formal private sector as the engine for growth has not sufficient to catch up job loss in the public sector after 1990, and absorb new job seekers considerably to the formal economy. Consequently, the paper concludes that the strength of mismatch hypothesis has now considerably faded away, and failure to create a sufficient amount of employment by the private sector led economy is largely responsible for the current high unemployment level of the economy.

ICSLS 2005

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