LankaBuzz

This kind of publicity to this institute is misleading. Currently more that 60% of SLIIT students are having difficulties findining jobs. It’s great the this goventment funded institute is giving opportunities to students who could afford going abroad or to other local institues, but the thing is, once they graduate how sure are they of their future.

Friends of mine who are at SLIIT have been looking for jobs everywhere, but lot of companies don’t like to hire them as their standards are very low, and it’s cost them a lot to get them upto standard. Their pay would start from a mere 10,000 a month and slowly progress.

SLIIT is just becoming a mass production factory with no quality in their students. Maybe they should aim at giving their students a better education, which would ensure their students a better future.

Now they are merely flooding the market with unproductive graduates who will have a harder future, and it will also cost those graduates more as they would have to do other prgrams to be acceptable in the industry.

It’s just my view from seeing some of the hardships my friends had to go through.

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http://www.dailynews.lk/2006/10/20/fin02.asp

Anjana Samarasinghe

IT: Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) is expected to provide 50 percent of the required IT professionals to the local IT industry.

Managing Director/CEO of the SLIIT Prof. Lalith Gamage told the media at the launching of the B.Sc. Degree Programme in Computer Systems and Networking recently that at present they are producing 40 percent of the total required IT professionals to the industry.

However SLIIT has produced over 1100 graduates to the industry and it will be 1500 by the end of this year. Annually SLIIT provides 500 to 600 graduates to the industry.

Now Sri Lanka has a growing market demand for specialists in the fields of computer network, wireless and mobile communication technologies created by the rapid growth of data networks both locally and globally, Gamage said.

A fresh IT graduate will get Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 30,000 and after three years they could demand for Rs. 75,000 to Rs. 80,000 per month, he added.

Chairman/President of the SLIIT Prof. Sam Karunaratne said that there should be a surplus of IT professionals in the industry to gain more business opportunities in the global IT sector.

The IT industry is an ample sector to venture out for countries like Sri Lanka since it does not need high infrastructure that is required for industries such as manufacturing, he said.

SLIIT has lunched a B.Sc. degree programme in computer systems and networking with the leading university in Australia Curtin University of technology for local students.

Recently I went to watch a movie at the cinema, before the movie started there were a few ads, and one of them was for some institute. Everything looked good, but at the end of it they showed over 50 universities.

Where is the focus ? Is every course the same ? So I could just do the degree there and say which university I want the degree from ? Is that how it goes ? I remember people talking of deals where I could get my degree for 1000USD just pay and get it, is this something like that ? I hope not.

It got me to wonder, some time ago a friend of mine was studying at can’t remember it’s name, I think it was, it was a US based I think. He did a few years there, wasn’t that great as it seemed, and later they gave him the option to go and study at one of their affiliate universities in the US. It turned out to be some 2 bit, crap university, well he said it couldn’t be even called a university, or institute or even a school !

Today I noticed in the papers the president had called for control over bogus BOI degrees. Taken from the Daily Mirror

“No more bogus BOI degrees
Amidst reports of mushroom higher education institutions giving questionable degrees, President Chandrika Kumaratunga has ordered that academic institutions must not be given permission to operate as BOI projects without approval from the Education Ministry or the University Grants Commission.”

Well this is good in a way, I was myself getting confused on what to go with, there are so many institutes out there these days, some eve run from a home. Well I guess there is always room for quick money.

How are we figure out what is a good institute, university, and so on ?

I would go with look at the long standing institutes, look at their track record of graduates, are they working, unemployed ? If they are employed are they employed at top jobs are they doing the work of those who do a basic diploma. There are some new ones which are supposed to be good but haven’t still met anyone from them. Check it they are they affiliated with a good university ? Are you looking at a future of working abroad? Do they offer programs where you can work study part of the degree abroad or you can do the full degree in Sri Lanka ? If work placement an option ? I heard from some friends of mine, that was a useful thing, as when you finish usually the place you had your work placement at, takes you back, that i most times. Do they have a decent studying environment ? Are the lecturers, well educated ? We don’t want people teaching us who are less educated than we are, again another friend of mine told me he was doing an MBA at some institute and later found out one of his lecturers didn’t even have a degree was just memorising and repeating, I hope this is not happening everywhere.

Those days when I went for anything I would compare the price and generally go for the cheaper option. One example not too relevant but hear it out, I wanted to buy a hi fi set up, I went all over the place, checked out a bunch of brands, listened to them, there were many good ones. Then I finalised it to 2 options. One a good a brand, but a bit more expensive and another unbranded one but sounded excellent and it was so much cheaper. What did I do went for the cheaper one, it was great at first, but later on problems started arising, this was not after 1 year or 3 years, after 3 months. I went back to the shop, and I could get nothing done, warranty also didn’t cover the problem I was stuck and I regretted not going for the good brand.

This happens here in education as well, some of these institutes get the best marketers, we get fooled, we join, and what do we find out 3 months down the line it’s a load of crap, but we can leave but loose a bit of our savings.

We could wait it out for 3 years but what do we find out next, we can’t get jobs. A friend of mine was telling me about this institute I think somewhere close to Malabe or in Malabe. They are an IT institute they take large amounts of students at very good prices but I heard more than 50% of them don’t have jobs are in jobs which a basic diploma would have given them.

Maybe like what the president is doing, someone could introduce like they have abroad a ranking system or something of that sort to help us better select our future.

Don’t get me wrong, not all institutes are bad, there are wonderful institutes which give us opportunities from Australia, UK and US.

Milton

There are scholarships available for Sri Lankans who want to do post
graduate studies in Ireland.

Please forward this message on so that you can in turn forward it to anyone
you might know would benefit.

The National University of Ireland has recently launched an International
Scholarship Programme directed initially at students from South Africa and
Sri Lanka.

The Programme provides a number of postgraduate scholarships for
outstanding students from South Africa and Sri Lanka, who would otherwise
be unable to finance their studies in
Ireland.

Priority will be given to applicants who demonstrate that the knowledge
they acquire from their studies will be utilised subsequently to support
development in the students’ home countries. The scholarship amount will be
up to EUR 15,000 for one academic year towards the
cost of travel and accommodation.

In addition, tuition costs will be borne by NUI, Galway.

Selection criteria will be based on academic merit and financial need.

Given that this is the first year of the Programme, existing
academic/administrative contacts which University staff may have, may serve
as an important avenue in attracting applicants.

Please inform any contacts you may have and invite them to make contact
directly with me.

Scholarships details are available on:

http://www.nuigalway.ie/prospective_students/international/international_sch
olarships.html