Is non-state, not-for-profit universities solution to SL’s shortage of IT professionals?

Sri Lanka is well known for its tea, gems and spices and over the years, the island nation has undergone a shift, making it popular for its services, where the local expertise in the IT space is much sought after.

Whilst the IT industry, along with the BPM sector, aspires to reach a revenue target of US  $ 5 billion by 2022 by creating 200,000 direct jobs and enabling the launch of 1,000 start-ups, the goal is somewhat to be ambitious, given the shortage of skills.

IT/BPM talent pool: high quality but low quantity
According to a survey done by the ICTA, the number of Sri Lanka’s ICT sector employees is expected to grow by 16.9 percent from 124,873 in 2018 and reach 146,089 in 2019. The survey says that ICT firms have already become the biggest employers in 2019, hiring 65.6 percent of the workforce, whereas non-ICT firms employed only 22 percent. 

Although the numbers many seem impressive on the face of things, the reality is far from it. Analysis has shown that in a bid to reach the US $ 5 billion mark by 2022, the ICT workforce is required to expand by five times, that is for the sector to have a pool of round 400,000 individuals in two years. 

Experts and industry representatives have acknowledged that extraordinary measures would be required to ensure the much required accelerated growth but issues in this regard are yet to be ironed out.

Problem
The demand for IT skills is very much present but the supply continues to be problematic. Despite universities and technical institutes functioning at full capacity at these faculties, it is unable to churn out the required output due to limited resources (limited student vacancies). 

According to the latest IT-BPM Workforce Survey 2019 report, the shortage of Sri Lanka’s ICT/BPM professionals is projected to widen to 12,140 this year, which is driven by the sector’s rapid growth. While the overall strength of the ICT/BPM workforce has grown by 50.7 percent during 2014-2018, the demand for graduates has increased from 6,246 in 2014 to 21,216 in 2019, with ICT firms accounting for 70.2 percent of the total demand. 

It is observed that there is an increase in the supply of the total number of graduates produced by training institutes – from 7,010 in 2014 to 12,307 in 2018, where ICT major graduates constitute a share of 63.7 percent.

The state universities provide free education but do not have the capacity to increase the number of IT graduates they produce annually, thus it becomes essential to explore new avenues to cater to the growing demand.

Can SL’s IT/BPM sector lean towards non-state universities?
Laying it out plain and simple, as long as there are enough talents to fuel the growing IT/BPM sector, the industry players would be contended. Nevertheless, the idea of non-state universities has been a sensitive area for Sri Lanka as anything other than the free education provided by the state is considered a ‘commodity’.

While the notion of ‘profit’ universities are frowned upon by certain sections of the masses as it is believed the focus of the establishment is solely on maximising profits and only a certain strata of society can afford to receive an education there, the concept of ‘non-state, not-for-profit universities’ has not met with much friction, which is welcome. 

Non-state, not-for-profit universities solution?
A not-for-profit university is an institution that is essentially managed by an independent and autonomous body where there are no owners or shareholders, leaving the management free to focus on providing quality education to their students. 

With Sri Lanka education system revolving around the concept of free education, where the focus is to ensure every student should have the opportunity to receive a university degree, a non-state, not-for-profit university allows students to afford this opportunity as there are only limited seats the state could accommodate.

Globally successful universities that run on this non-state, not-for-profit model include Yale University, Brown University, Cornell University, University of Oxford, University of Leeds, Stanford University and LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.

A local success story: SLIIT
One such successfully running establishment of this nature is the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), which was founded in 1999 by a few university academics and professionals who acknowledged the need to produce more IT graduates than the government universities were capable of, in an effort to boost the IT industry.

Employing this model, SLIIT, as a not-for-profit institute, pumps back its profits to the establishment itself, using the funds to boost capacity, improve the faculty and better the quality. 
The model is proved to be viable for Sri Lanka as it has made higher education affordable whilst still making available easy payment schemes. According to SLIIT Chairman Professor L. Ratnayake, being a not-for-profit university has provided the opportunity to create partnerships and affiliations, increase the scope of programmes with growing affiliations, boost the quality of education due to the ability to fund high-tech equipment and providing qualified lecturers and allow the possibility to expand and make decisions efficiently with no red tape from the government. 

“Today, SLIIT has 9,500 students reading for 38 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes taught by over 300 highly qualified academic staff, with over 75 of them possessing PhDs and others with postgraduate qualifications.

“The institute has partnered with foreign universities ranked above the top universities in Sri Lanka, which has helped to bring content that is on par with foreign universities, which is achieved via accreditations,” he said.

Performance thus far
SLIIT has been and continues to be one of the key contributors to the IT/BPM space in terms of talent. In 2014, SLIIT has established an in-house internship programme for its undergraduates in collaboration with highly reputable organisations in the country with the intention of providing training opportunities for students. 

At every stage of the degree, the student is qualified to a certain level to service the requirements of the IT industry. Acknowledging the industry cannot afford a four-year wait to receive graduates into the system, students are given the flexibility of opting for fully-paid hands-on experience at some of the top IT/BPM entities in the country, before completing the final stages.
While over 95 percent of SLIIT graduates being well employed in different industries and 93 percent are employed by the time of graduation, successful products of SLIIT are big names such as ‘Zone24/7’ and ‘Arimac’.

Operating for nearly two decades, SLIIT has been able to produce over 26,000 professionals and over 15,000 graduates, contributing to the development of the country’s economy by making the IT industry of Sri Lanka the fifth largest export earner. However, it being the only one of its kind and producing employable, industry-ready graduates, it would only bridge the demand and supply gap to a certain extent, making reaching the 2022 IT/BPM revenue target a challenging one to achieve.