Hon. Ravi Karunanayake

Hon. Ravi Karunanayake raised a supplementary question on higher education capacity and foreign exchange outflows. He noted that while 174,000 students reportedly qualify for university admission after the G.C.E. Advanced Level Examination, only about 55,400 are accommodated by the UGC in 22 universities, and cited media reports that around 100,000 students go abroad annually for higher education. He sought to quantify the resulting financial outflow, estimating an average annual cost of Rs. 7 million per student and referring to its conversion into US dollars.