Some Determinants of the Character of Advanced Education

Lalith Edirisinghe1 and J.A. Karunaratne2

1 CINEC City Branch, No 15, Kinross Avenue, Colombo 04, Sri Lanka2 Dept. of Logistics and Transportation, Faculty of Management, CINEC Campus, Malabe, Sri Lanka

1 lalithedirisinghe2@gmail.com Tel. 0777 562 5052 prof.karu@cinec.edu Tel. 0719 101 237

AbstractThe largest majority of the students who manage to enter the universities for their advanced education seem to have secured their qualifications, in parallel, from two distinct schools of learning: “the day school” and the “tuition classes”. These two schools are starkly distinct from each other as the day schools offer, basically, curriculum-centred education in the subjects whilst the tuition classes offer, basically, practical skills based on revision of the past question papers. Since recently, the university lecturers have started making a distinction between students who come predominantly from schools that offer curriculum-based education and those others who come predominantly from tuition classes.1 The aim of the present research is to identify the academically significant distinguishing features of these two categories of students and investigate if one category of the students is better in their attitude and aptitude towards academic education than the other category of students. For the purpose of the study, the data and information have been gathered from structured surveys conducted at universities and other institutions of advanced education. For the same purpose, the unstructured data and information have also been gathered from lecturers/teachers from similar institutions of learning. The analyses show that there is comparatively better attitude and aptitude towards academic education amongst students who came predominantly from schools that offered curriculum-based education than that when concerning the other category of students. However, it must be added that this distinction is the greatest during the first year of the studies. During the second and the third year of the studies, the distinction between the two types of students tends to ebb away. Thus, it is important to be mindful about this distinction in their attitude towards academic education between the two types of students and prepare subject curricular and syllabi to help bridge the gap in the course their education.

1 Most students seem to secure education from both the types of schools, simultaneously. However, in this paper, makes a distinction between students who follow comparatively more the education offered by schools that offer curriculum based education and those other students who follow comparatively more the education offered by tuition schools that rely on question-answer based system of education.