Age of university graduates

President Ranil Wickremesinghe in one of his frequent visits to Parliament, stated that he had graduated from the university when he was 21 years old. He lamented that the graduates of today pass out at a much later age. Several factors could be adduced to explain how the graduates pass out at much later ages than before.

In the early 1950s and 1960s the majority of undergraduates passed out of the university when they were 20 or 21 depending on whether they read for a general or special degree. At that time there was a minimum age to enter the university which was seventeen. After sitting the University Entrance examination, which was conducted by the university, the students would be admitted only if they had passed their seventeenth birthday. When a student enters the university at 17, he would graduate at 20 if he has done a general degree or at 21 if the undergraduate had followed a special degree.

But later, due to no fault of the students, their age of entry went up to 20 or 21 years. This happened first with the beeshanaya when the universities were dysfunctional though they were open. As a result of this situation there was a three-year backlog for the examinations to be conducted and the new entrants to be admitted. This resulted in the students losing valuable time of the lives just stagnating at home.

The other situation that resulted in the undergraduates losing valuable time was the frequent protests and strikes when no academic activities were conducted. In addition to strikes, there were instances when some undergraduates took university teachers and officers hostage to get the authorities to grant their demands. In this type of gheraoing sometimes it is the Vice-Chancellor and senior officers who were the hostages. The strange thing is that some of these persons who were leaders of strikes, protests and gheraoing in the universities have entered parliament with one becoming a cabinet minister and at one time he was in charge of the Higher Education portfolio and another becoming a State Minister.

Now a new situation has cropped up because of the Covid19 pandemic where the schools and universities had to be closed for long periods and thereby the students had to sit the GCE Advance Level examination at a later age than before as the examinations too were postponed a number of times. The result of this is the students cannot enter universities at a younger age as was done before. This results in their passing out as graduates much later than when everything was normal.

These are the reasons for the present-day undergraduates not being able to pass out as graduates from universities at a young age as before when the university/universities and schools were functioning uninterrupted.

HM NISSANKA WARAKAULLE