The University of Colombo, for the first time, in its 153-year-old history is exploring the possibility of raising funds to reduce the dependency on Government funding.
This will be done mainly by increasing the intake of foreign students and linking up with the private sector to offer a series of services to them.
Colombo University Vice Chancellor Senior Prof. H. D. Karunaratne told the Colombo University Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) Annual General Meeting at the Shangri La Hotel that the foreign intake of students has increased to around 225 and they are each paying around USD 3,000 for their study courses. “We are looking at doubling this figure very soon.”
The Don said that they are already linked to several global universities and hope to get more students from Chinese universities to study DBA programs in Sri Lanka.
He said that they also assist the private sector by doing research for them to obtain patents. “We also provide our students knowledge to the private sector to design new products and also improve the quality of products.”
The three-year DBA program is specifically designed for senior, experienced professional managers in the private and public sectors seeking to become a practitioner-researcher in their field. “Unlike a traditional PhD, the DBA enables candidates to make a contribution to knowledge through the “novel application of theory” rather than the “development of new theory”.
Prof. Karunaratne said that though their student to lecturer ratio is 1 to 30, compared to the other universities, the ratio of 1 to 10, the Colombo University’s efficiency is far greater than the others.
