SLIIT to enrol South Asian students

Student enrolment increased last year:

Harshini Perera

The Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) has planned to enrol students from India, Bangladesh and Maldives. Initially the students will be from the region according to proximity and then SLIIT will cater countries such as Pakistan and the Middle East in the next phase, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), President/CEO, Prof. Lalith B. Gamage told the Daily News Business.

He said a large number of students in India migrate to countries like Australia and the UK. The middle class of those countries is the customer we have targeted since they are large in numbers.

Education institutes in those countries will not cater to all the sectors of the country but a specialized segment of society, that is the upper class.

Some of the institutes do not have partnerships with foreign bodies.

“Hence, our involvement fills that gap and students have to arrive in Sri Lanka to gain education. We will establish branches in those countries at the latter phase of our involvement in their education,” he said.

SLIIT has also increased new student enrolments to 2,000 in 2009. This is compared to 1,500 students in year 2008. SLIIT has been providing services to large number of IT companies in Sri Lanka.

SLIIT will have its presence soon in Jaffna by the end of this year.

At present, there are 5,000 students in SLIIT and we came up the idea of expansion.

Therefore, SLIIT constructed a building in Malabe and expanded the Metro-Campus in Merchant Tower, Colombo. He said that the Matara centre has been upgraded and relocated with a new building to cater to a wider sphere of students.

“We need to expand the range of degree programs into multi-media and computer gaming, business management specialization and new areas such as electrical engineering, mechatronics and telecommunication. Apart from that, SLIIT has taken measures to conduct several MBA degree programs as well,” he said.

Prof. Gamage said SLIIT has introduced new degree programs in Business Management apart from the three IT specializations in Information Technology, Information System and Computer System Network and Electronic Engineering.

In addition, students can follow foreign university degree programs locally at SLIIT.

SLIIT is involved in 15 partnerships with international Universities in the UK, Australia and Canada that students can complete two years of the degree in Sri Lanka and transfer to a University.