EDUCATION SAKVITTAS AND YOU

Nimal Wirasekara Chartered Marketer, MSLIM, MCIM, DipM (CIM), HMIMM

(SA), FASMI(Aus)

It is a captive market of students who have just completed their ALs available to
be exploited in the present situation by people offering unacceptable qualification
to earn a “Fast Buck”. I wish to call them education Sakvittas. There are other
who make money from conducting huge seminars on Secrets of Passing an
Exam” etc.

Vocation Training Authority of Sri Lanka is one organization which can help you
to be guided in this situation. Media and the government gazette offers the best
effective guide in this situation. The third guide would be the Ministry of Higher
Education and Universities and finally embassies and high commissions.

In this complex situation a mix of these guides would be the ideal solution.

Vocational Training Authority (VTA) has registered many organizations that

provide qualifications as well as coaching for students. Being a government
organization registration with the VTA will ensure that those registered
educational institutes are regularly audited and offer quality products. This long
felt need of controls over unscrupulous education shops have now been
addressed by the VTA. VTA has been advertising how to recognize an
educational institute that is registered wit the VTA. This advertisement helps you
identify other institutes that may be after your money. Eg. The advertisement
says that if you get a leaflet or a brochure through mail without you requesting for
it, you should be extra careful. Another advice given was the display of the VTA
certificate. Institutes which offer scholarships and where one has to pay to sit for
the scholarship exam can also take the student for a ride. Fifty thousand student
may sit for the scholarship exam and if the institute charges LKR 1,000 per
student for the exam the institute will make LKR 50 million from the scholarship
exam. They may pass only ten students giving the institute a huge profit.

One should also be able to get a list of all those institutes registered with the VTA
by calling them personally or over the phone.

Media is the strongest and most reliable guide for educational qualifications
available for the Sri Lankans. If one follows the vacancy advertisements
appearing in the media they will get an insight into the areas where there are
more vacancies. These advertisements might even offer a clue to the salaries
available for those people who have obtained the required qualification. Some of
these qualifications may not be listed with the NVA but may have a very high
demand in the job market. Finally the quality of the qualified person is determined
by the demand the nation will have for this person. How useful will the person be
to the country? Will this qualified person be a burden to the country? So it is the
employer who will make the final call on the quality of the qualification and media
including the government gazette will help you identify the quality of the end
result of these qualification…which is the employability at the best salary.

However, in addition to these qualifications there are many foreign universities

offering their services in Sri Lanka competing with local universities. They may
offer very attractive conditions such as low entry qualifications, lesser number of
subjects etc. In this situation it would be prudent to get the opinion of the Ministry
of Higher Education. Fortunately the Ministry now has a long term vision which
will help Sri Lanka to offer the services of foreign universities in Sri Lanka,
making our country a hub of education. However there is a “Caveat” I this check
too. There may be top universities which are not registered with the
Commonwealth Universities. As the Ministry of higher education recognizes only
those universities which are listed with the Commonwealth Universities some top
universities may not be recognized by the Ministry. Eg. Is the Harward University
or the Princeton University which are two of the top universities in the world
recognized by the Ministry of Higher Education? Therefore, we require another
check to select the right university in addition to the Ministry of Higher Education.

Embassies and high commissions including branch organizations such as the

British Council will also guide your selection of a university. However there
should be a cross check done to see the acceptability of the qualification in Sri
Lanka. Eg. There may be certain Medical Degrees which are not recognized in
Sri Lanka, and the parents may spend millions of rupees for a qualification which
is not useful. However, if these people after qualifying can practice in those
countries and if this is what the parents and the student wants then they can
invest in such qualifications though these are not recognized in Sri Lanka.

In addition to professional qualifications such as medicine, engineering etc., our

universities are not yet geared to supply the people required by the country
specially for the private sector. The private sector requires management
personnel including accountants, marketers, IT personnel, process management
personnel, and Human Resource Management personnel. Unfortunately except
for “management” qualified people from universities most other vacancies are
filed by people qualified from institutes outside the university system, due to the
higher quality of those qualifications.

In the field of IT there are many people and institutes that offer various
qualifications which are just the basics and will not provide a person with job
opportunities. Mainly in cities such as Kandy, Galle and Matara these bogus
qualifications prevail as they are cheap though not recognized by any employer.

Though these institutes bears a big burden off the government by qualifying Sri
Lankans who are not able to enter the university system, unfortunately it has also
created a system where University qualifications are not recognized on equal
terms as the qualifications offered by these institutes.
In one way there are thousands of people who make their living by being
education Sakvittas and also working for them. It is for us to decide whether we
should get caught to these people or whether we should spend our hard earned
money to obtain an acceptable qualification. At the age late teens and early
twenties students tend to do what the peers do. It is up to the society to guide
them in the right direction to ensure a quality education for them and thereby
creating a high quality employees who will finally add value to the whole nation.