The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake
Ravi Karunanayake questioned the limited admission of A/L-qualified students to state universities, noting that only about 42,000 enter despite 173,000 qualifying and substantial public expenditure on the university system. He asked the Prime Minister why the Government could not further strengthen higher education options, including private university access and interest-free loan schemes, citing past policy efforts and the large private and overseas education spending by families.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, my first supplementary question is this. The answer indicates that about 173,000 students qualify to enter university after passing the Advanced Level. You said around 87,000 have applied to universities. However, all 173,000 have a right to go to university. Out of them, about 42,000 are admitted to state universities. In the 2025 Budget, you are spending Rs. 135 billion on the university system. Over four years, that is Rs. 613,000 per student. Around 40,000 go abroad for education, typically taking three years, and 120,000 remain outside. Hon. Prime Minister, banks estimate about Rs. 300 billion is spent on this. I’m happy even NPP Ministers’ children go to private universities. That’s good; that’s how it should be. Can’t we further strengthen this university system? Why aren’t we doing it? In our time we gave interest-free loans and popularized this.
¶ 02 Why can’t we do it now? I enumerate these because there are very important issues here, Hon. Speaker.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Friday, 14 March 2025 ·No. 1744281136023320 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 14 March 2025. No. 1744281136023320. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/26400