Starter Kit. Idea 335 of 500. Cluster 16
University short courses sold to the children of Sri Lankans abroad: a summer in Peradeniya
The mechanism, from the book
177,000 qualify every year and 45,000 get a place. The other 130,000 are a market that nobody has built for, and the polytechnic is not a second choice when it leads to a job.
The first step
Write a 2-week summer programme in outline: lectures, visits, a stay near Peradeniya and a price. Send it to Sri Lankan associations and language schools abroad, and ask parents to register interest with a small deposit. Then take the list of deposits to the university department concerned and ask about hosting. A list of paying families is what makes the university say yes.
- Who pays first
- Sri Lankan parents abroad who want their teenagers to know the island, and will pay for a supervised summer with a certificate.
- What leaves today
- The children of Sri Lankans abroad visit as tourists or not at all, and the university earns nothing from their connection to the island.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask what a group programme for visiting students must register or insure.
Check before you spend
The university department's written agreement to host, visas for visiting students, insurance for minors, and safeguarding rules for anyone under eighteen.
Find out these three numbers
- What would parents abroad pay for a summer programme?
- How many families would put down a deposit?
- What would the university charge to host the lectures?
A comparison from the book
Australia's New Colombo Plan. Chapter Sixteen
"Australia now runs a New Colombo Plan in the other direction, sending its own"
Students sent the other way build ties that last; the children of Sri Lankans abroad are the first market.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.