CSCT caters to foreign markets with BSc. in Quantity Surveying

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Keeping in line with the promise of making Sri Lanka a knowledge hub in the region, the Colombo School of Construction Technology (CSCT) announced the launch of a Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Quantity Surveying in partnership with the renowned School of Built Environment, University of Salford, UK.

The CSCT is the first private educational institute to offer a full four year honours degree programme that is three years’ study, and one year of industrial training, in Quantity Surveying in Sri Lanka. The only other institution to offer a similar programme is the University of Moratuwa. The in-built year of industrial placement at the end of the degree will allow the smooth transition into the professional workforce. In addition to the broader vistas that this programme will open up for engineers in the country, the partnership with the UK university will also offer prospective students a chance of transferring abroad for higher studies.

Although unable to attend the event, the Minister of Higher Education, S.B. Dissanayake via a statement expressed his enthusiasm at the establishment of the partnership.

“Attaining this is yet another step in the right direction and we must continue to encourage private sector education as it will help facilitate narrowing the gap in education that currently exists. We need quality non-state institutions to come in so as to provide students with quality education and opportunities,” he said.

The Secretary to the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Sunil Navaratne while addressing the audience at the launch earlier this week stated that quantity surveying is now an area that has huge demand especially in foreign markets and that the introduction of this marketable degree would in turn cater to the rising demand.

“We want socially responsible and ethical universities coming into Sri Lanka and there needs to be big changes made to our higher education system. We recently created State employment for over 40,000 graduates from our local universities without any reasonable explanation for it. If we calculate the cost of this, we need to pay these people around 600 million rupees a month in salaries which amounts to approximately 7.2 billion rupees a year – just to provide unmarketable graduates with jobs,” the Secretary pointed out.

“The collaboration between the University of Salford and Sri Lanka actually commenced many years ago and a lot of the staff at the University of Salford, UK consists of students from the University of Moratuwa and we received 40 students from here in the last year alone. We are therefore very happy to be able to take this to the next level with the introduction of this degree and look forward to further expansion in the near future,” said the Head of the School of Built Architecture, University of Salford, Professor Mike Kagioglou. Currently, over 6% of A/ Level graduates in Sri Lanka study for foreign degrees and the country now has over 25 partnerships with UK institutions. The Government with the various concessions it offers to foreign educational institutions, has boosted their interest in setting up operations in Sri Lanka. The concessions include tax benefits, duty free imports, and land for setting up campuses and in return, all foreign institutions are requested to offer Sri Lankan students a 20% scholarship at their respective campuses abroad.