Wednesday, February 17, 2016

I am going to advise the country’s 50th in A levels NOT to go to State University


I meeting a girl from a middle class family in Gampaha, who has 4 A’s in last August, A level examination. She wants advise on what to do, hence and her first choice is to go to University in Sri Lanka, as she can get into all courses that are relevant to the subjects that she took. The As are in English, French, Greeko Roman Civilization and Political Science. Her parents are not that well educated and so are not in a position to advise her on what to do.

I DON’T WANT HER TO TURN INTO AN UNEMPLOYED GRADUATE as in my previous blog entry, God forbid!

She can speak Italian and has lived in Italy, and Switzerland. Her father had got some work in both those countries and is self made, travelling there on a business venture. She got all A’s in O levels in a small local school in Mahara. I believe it is the Foreign Service that she would like to enter eventually.

If she applies to get into University, she will not start till early next year. She would complete her first degree if all goes according to schedule without interruption, something that is uncertain in 2020 at the earliest, and convocation in 2021. In addition, the course syllabus would NOT have been updated for a couple of decades, making most of her instruction of no current practical use. The availability of periodicals in the library or access to journals on line from international sources will also be limited in this situation.

 I am suggesting she does a degree in International Relations at a University in the USA, firstly by following 2 years here in Sri Lanka through an affiliated Private College such as ANC and then finish her degree in the US. She can, if she does well, get a full scholarship to do her Masters at a prestigious US institution, so that by 2021, she will be able to join the Sri Lanka Foreign Service, if she still feels that is what she wants to do by then, and not been bagged by some better offer in the USA!

She is handicapped in that she does not have a social background like I have in being able to meet with current serving and retired diplomats and Ministers in the Foreign Ministry, to guide her in the best choice she should make, on mapping her potential to suit Sri Lanka, to develop, foreign service officers of caliber to represent Sri Lanka around the world, a DIRE DIRE need of the hour and I do not believe is being done even today, to train our future foreign service carder. I will try and arrange for her to meet some of our past stars of the FS.

I am open to offers from my international readers to present me your opinion. 

No comments:

Post a Comment