Convocation Speech

Abstract

Sri Lanka’s modern Higher Education system could be said to have begun in 1921 with the establishment of the Ceylon University College, which was affiliated to the University of London. The transition of this institution to a National University granting its own degrees took all of 21 years, for it was only in 1942 that the University of Ceylon was established. In 1959 the two main centres of Buddhist learning with a long tradition of scholarship, the Vidyalankara and Vidyodaya Pirivenas were converted into Univer­sities and are today known as the University of Kelaniya and the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. In 1972 the Ceylon College of Technology at Katubedde was elevated to University status and became the University of Moratuwa in 1979. In the same year, the University of Jaffna was established after first being set up as a campus of the University of Ceylon in 1974. Your own University - the University of Ruhuna-was elevated to University status In 1984 after its early beginnings in 1978. Higher education in Sri Lanka did not end with the establishment of these institutions. Today, we have in addition, the Batticaloa University, the Open University, the Colombo North Medical College, the Sir John Kotelawala Defence Academy, the Undergraduate Institutes of Aesthetic Studies, Workers’ Education and Indigenous Medicine as well as the Post Graduate Institutes of Medicine, Agriculture and Pali and Buddhist Studies.