"Students following the above program have been in contact
with some of us over a number of years, regarding shortcomings in their
program. About two years back, some of us did a serious study of the issues
presented to us, and made a comprehensive set of recommendations for the reform
of the whole system of non-university tertiary education, going beyond the HNDE
program, as we felt that such a reform was a national need. This was presented
as a memorandum to the National Education Commission when they called for representations
from the public. It was also presented to all other relevant authorities at
various times over the last two years. However, no serious consideration seems
to have been given to our representations.
The HNDE students have now requested us to propose an
immediate remedy to their urgent needs, as an overall solution to the problems
of tertiary education based on its unification seems to be too difficult to
implement. We feel that this program (the HNDE) is important in the national context
and that it deserves more attention. As the proposed unified system of tertiary
education is not forthcoming, we now propose that at least the HNDE program be
restructured by affiliation to a suitable University (perhaps Colombo or
Kelaniya) as an institute attached to the university, on the model of The
Institute of Technology University of Moratuwa (ITUM) which was established in
2000 to conduct the NDT program."
