[vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”1587″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In 2017, out of all the qualified students (160,517) from the advanced level (A/L) examination in Sri Lanka, only 0.8%, 1%, 3%, and 0.2% got admission to the highly sought after degrees – medicine, engineering, management, and law, respectively [Source: Sri Lanka University Statistics 2017]. More than 95% of the students have to select other degrees in government universities or look for opportunities in private universities. The awareness of other degrees and their career opportunities in Sri Lanka is very less among the student population. The Career Compass Web is an online portal where students can enter their exam results and get to know all the degrees they are eligible to follow together with their career opportunities.
As of now, there is no such education service in Sri Lanka, with the information related to higher education opportunities. Most of the students have their goals and aims set based on their A/L subject stream, while in reality, there are many other options that they could choose from. It is worthwhile being aware of the available paths even before selecting a subject stream for A/L’s rather than thinking about the ”‘what if”s and “what could have been”s afterwards.
Developing the Career Compass Web requires many hours of researching, vetting and cataloging content available in several resources. This labor intensive process was diligently taken over by volunteers of IEEE Sri Lanka Section and SL2College. The “Data Collection Night” held at Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) was one of the many such days spent on data collection for the Career Compass Web.
The night started with a workshop on “How to Collect Data” to get all the volunteers upto speed about the process. The first data collecting session lasted for two and a half hours and after three such rounds distributed over a period of 8 hours, the day’s goals were met. It was a long night for everyone starting at 7PM and ending at 8AM on the next day morning. However, the smiles at the end of the night gives evidence to a night well spent.
The collective effort has lead to our first milestone where a booklet summarising the information was published. By the end of 2020, the website will be launched to enable a more convenient search option for everyone. Stay tuned to SLInspire to get to know more about the Career Compass as well as our other education services. You can subscribe to email updates by filling the following form. We’ll let you know as soon as we add new content. (we promise we won’t spam you).
We find it fulfilling to be able to help someone at a stage where they have to make one of the most critical decisions about tertiary education/career options of their life. We believe that enabling a student to take a well-informed decision about their education/career beyond A/Ls to be critical in order to enhance the quality and the quantity of Sri Lanka’s skilled workforce.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
