Paper published at IEEE TALE Conference - 2019

1. A survey study on higher education trends among
Information Technology Professionals in Sri Lanka
T.D.B Weerasinghe
tharindu.weerasinghe@ieee.org
General Manager
Seebo Networks Lanka (Pvt) Ltd.
Sri Lanka
Abstract— Education is a never-ending process in life.
Proper education in any domain, will make you a competent
person in that particular domain. Education has different type
of sectors in the likes of kindergarten, primary, secondary,
tertiary and above. Further, vocational and technical education
are also notable. In this research study, the overall objective
was to understand the higher education tendency among the
Sri Lankan professionals who are in the Information
Technology (IT) domain. Further studies after the basic
degrees or diplomas, are meant to be higher studies. To carry
out the particular study, a sample of 100 IT professionals were
considered to be used in an email-based survey. By the time the
survey ended after being active for 10 weeks, the response rate
was 30%. Upon the outcome of the survey trends were analyzed.
PSPP (an open source tool for the analysis of sampled data) was
used to analyze the data. As the major outcomes of this study
60% of the responders have already done a higher degree apart
from the basic degree. 66.7% of the responders mention that
they would want to gain further knowledge in the respective
domains as well as a recognition at the work place after doing a
post graduate degree.
Keywords—Sri Lankan IT Industry, Sri Lankan IT
Professionals, Higher Studies
I. INTRODUCTION
Sri Lanka is a rapidly developing hub for Information
Technology services. Offshore operations are gradually being
increased. A heavy bunch of Information Technology (IT)
professionals help the country to attract foreign income by
engaging in various type of IT professions. Ranging from
data entry operations to complex enterprise application
development as well as cloud services, data science, artificial
intelligence, network and systems, interfacing and
information security are the contemporary highly demanding
domains. Sri Lanka host a vast range of IT professions within
the country. Most of them are off-shore operations but yet,
Sri Lankan IT industry helps them to grow their businesses.
According to sources, Sri Lanka's IT and BPO sector tripled
its exports and doubled the workforce within a period over
five years. The particular field is one of the rapidly growing
areas in the Sri Lankan economy as it has grown by hundred
and twenty percent over the last five years. Sri Lanka can be
regarded as a rising star in the galaxy as a global IT Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) destination of choice in a number
of key areas. Sri Lanka was placed 11th
among the top 50
international outsourcing destinations in 2017 according to
AT Kearney. Sri Lanka’s software industry produces world-
class products and has grown significantly over the past
decade. The software services sector comprises Banking and
Financial Services, Insurances Services, Telecommunications
and Software Testing.[1].
In such an emerging and demanding industry, the most
valuable asset is its workforce, i.e. the IT professionals
ranging from Software Engineers, Application programmers,
Software Testers, QA Engineers, Software Architects, IT
project managers and so on. It is not an exaggeration to
mention that “better the quality of the workforce, better the
outcome!”. Hence studying about the passion or attitudes
about following post graduate studies in the likes of a
Masters in the desired field of education or any other relevant
professional education, can be treated as an interesting survey
in-order to get an idea about the up-to-date and continuously
improving IT professionals in Sri Lanka.
II. SRI LANKAN IT PROFESSIONALS
Sri Lankan Information Technology Industry comprises
various types of professionals. The main and also the
demanding profession is the profession of Software Engineer
but last few years we witnesses a lot of job roles into the
market. If we specify the job roles in the IT industry there is a
huge range., For example they consist of Software
Developers/Engineers, Application Programmers, Business
System Analysts, Software Test Engineers, Software Quality
Assurance Engineers, Software and Product Architects,
Consultants System Engineers, Networks Engineers,
Information Security Engineers, IT System Auditors, IT
Project Managers, IT Lecturers and so on. In those specified
job roles we have sub categories such as Associate, Senior,
Lead and Principal levels depending on the organization that
they work in [2].
Most of them come with a strong IT related educational
background. Most of them have either Bachelors of Sciences,
Engineering or IT degrees. There is a mixture of graduates
from the state universities as well as the private universities
who offer various types of IT related degrees in Sri Lanka.
Information and Communication Technology Agency
(ICTA) of Sri Lanka has carried out a survey in Sri Lanka in
August 2019; as per the particular survey, the overall
capacity of the IT workforce in Sri Lanka has grown from
82854 persons in 2014, to 124,873 in 2018 which shows a
growth of 50.7% and is expected to increase up to 146,089 in
year 2019. The female workforce in the ICT sector is 34%
from the overall workforce in year 2018. The survey
illustrates a relatively young workforce with 93% of ICT
professionals are below the age of 45 years and 80% of the
workforce is not having more than 8 years of experience.

2. Furthermore, 64.2% of the ICT workforce have Bachelor’s
degrees out of which 30.3% are females and 69% are male;
In case of PG Diploma level, females have share of 35%,
which depict the quality and education of the ICT workforce
in Sri Lanka [3].
Designations of professionals who responded to the survey:
Software Engineer
Senior Engineer
Senior Software Engineer
Technical Lead
Consultant
Consultant - Network Solutions
Software QA/Test Engineer
Business Analyst
Senior Creative Writer
Project Manager
Manager Software Development
Manager-Business Solutions
Head of IT
Lecturer – IT
The above sample covers the majority of the roles of the IT
Industry in Sri Lanka.
III. POST GRADUATE COURSES IN SRI LANKA
There a lot of post-graduate course on offer, for IT sector
employees. Both government and private sector universities
and affiliated institutes offer the degrees and diplomas.
Recently some institutes introduced executive master’s
programs specially to cater the needs of professionals who
lives a busy life. In literature, the most popular post graduate
courses among the IT graduates are Master of Business
Administration and Master of Science courses. As per the
results of the survey also it is obvious that IT professionals
like to do MBAs and MScs. In fact, a significant number of
them have obtained the degrees. There are many private
sector institutes which offer IT master’s degrees and MBAs.
[4] As per this survey the IT professionals are concerned
about the quality of the degree that they offer.
IV. EDUCATION STRUCTURE IN SRI LANKA
It is important to get an idea about the overall education
structure in Sri Lanka. Starting from the kindergarten level
there are defined paths up to higher education. As per
indexmundi.com, Sri Lanka has a literacy rate of 92.6% over
the total population (by 2015) [5]. An informative document
was published by wenr.wes.org and it is illustrated here [6].
Fig.1. A graphical interpretation of Educational System in Sri Lanka
V. RESEARCH METHOD
A questionneir was ciruclated via email, among 100 IT
professionals (irrespective of the gender) who are in
diffferent job roles as mentioned in the section II. The
response rate is 30% by the deadline. Depending on the
particular respnses, the results were analyzed. The main focus
of the questionneir was to get an idea about the enthusiasm of
the IT professionals who have more than 4 years of
experience in the field, to do higher studies while working in
the IT sector, nature of the post-graduate courses they want
or wanted to do, and also the advices for the fresh graduates
who are willing to start their IT careers sooner.

3. VI. RESULTS.
Based on the survey the following results are
illustrated. It was really a challenge to gather information
from the sample. Despite the fact that 30% is the response
rate, the ones who responded, have given their best possible
responses in detail. Gender wise many of the responders
were males (80%) and the rest were female professionals.
Out of the 100 professionals contacted via email (mainly
based on professional connections) 15 were female.
Fig. 2. Responses on “why the responder wants or wanted to do higher
studies while engaging in work”.
Fig. 3. Responses on “whether the responder thinks that the employers
should encourage their employees to do higher studies”
Fig. 4. Responses on “whether the responder has a self-motivation in
doing higher studies”.
Fig. 5. Responses on “whether the responder has already obtained a
post-graduate qualification”.
Fig. 6. Responses on “whether the responder likes to do higher
studies”.
The results of this particular study which were analysed
upon the responses, show that the most of the
responders(80%) have positive attitude in continuing higher
studies after their basic professional education, despite
various other commitments. 2 out of 30 responders (6.67%)
advise the freshers who enter the IT industry to continue
further studies after getting sufficient industry experience and
also before the personal and family commitments increase.
Further they advise to clearly identify the type of the higher
degree that they would be following and also a few
responders i.e. 3 out of 30, (10%) have stated that some
professional certifications according to the relevant track,
would become handy for the future.
Using PSPP, an open-source tool dedicated for statistical
analysis, some data were analysed. Outcomes are illustrated
as follows:

4. Fig. 7. What Type of a PG a responder has done? (1.0- MBA,
2.0-MSc)
Fig. 8. What Type of a PG a responder wants to do? (1.0- MBA, 2.0-
MSc, 3.0- MPhil, 4.0 - PhD)
Fig. 9. Distribution of Type of Designations
(1-Software Engineer, 2-Senior Software Engineer, 3-Technical Lead, 4-
QA Engineer, 5-Senior Creative Writer, 6-Lead Software Engineer, 7-
Manager, 8-Head of Department, 9-Consultant, 10-Lecturer, 11-Business
Analyst)
As notable outcomes, 5 out of 10 Senior Software
Engineers have already followed a post graduate course
whereas 3 out of 4 managers too, have already followed the
same. 2 out of 2 Heads of Departments have completed the
post graduate degree.
VII. DISCUSSION
As per the results the majority of the sample had
wanted to do a post-graduate degree because of the fact that
they wanted to enhance their subject knowledge as well as
career prospects. 60% of the sample have already obtained a
higher educational qualification apart from the first degree
and regardless of whether they have completed already or
not most of them like MBA (Master of Business
Administration). The greatest number of employees among
the sample hold the roles Software Engineer and above (let’s
say technical roles). And among them most of them have
preferred MBA over MSc due to the fact that they think
obtaining a managerial knowledge will be an added
advantage for their career and at the same time gathering
non-technical but useful business domain knowledge will
useful in future.
There were notable advises by the responders to the
younger generation or fresh graduates. Almost all of them
advised to continue studies while working and complete
them before marriage. When professionals have family
commitments, it is obvious that dedicating time for
education with too many other commitments, will be tough.
Higher the responsibilities harder the dedication toward
studies. Moreover, among those advices and shared
experience it is noted that each employee should to fulfill
day to day office work without intercepting with academic
work. One can hardly find employers who encourage
employees to follow higher education while working and
you need to be lucky enough to get one. Somehow you have
to find and manage your time to handle both parties. In
return always try to apply and share the knowledge at your
workplace and ongoing projects which means the employer
will benefit from the continuous education of certain
employees and such employees should be rewarded.
Once you are committed, never give-up until you
finish the course. – it was another significant advice from the
responders, because there are many cases where
professionals start post graduate studies and pay the course
in full, yet do not complete due to various obstacles. So, it is
important to complete the studies before more burdens come
in your way.
One notable result is that most of the professionals
who responded to the survey have mentioned the negative
impact of the employers to encourage their employees to do
higher studies. In other words, there are no significant
motivation factors from the employers toward their
employees to carry on studies while working. (not in all
cases). It gives me an impression where employers can
benefit a lot if they allow their valuable human assets to do
further studies due to the fact that they will stay in the
organization much longer with sound knowledge and self-
satisfaction. Furthermore, the employee gratitude toward the
organization, once they are allowed and encouraged to
pursue higher studies while serving to the organization, will
be beneficial as the employees thrive more for
organizational success.
Being the general manager/head of operation in an
offshore software firm in Sri Lanka, I myself always
encourage my staff to engage in any type of higher studies
which can improve their technical and managerial skills
because I feel that if they are motivated then they will work
more for the organization. The senior management has made

5. arrangements to reimburse some course fee for high
performing employees which was really motivational.
A notable advantage of engaging in higher studies
while working, is that the industrial exposure will be useful
to realize the theories and concepts taught in the particular
course, given the fact that the particular person is following
a relevant course to his or her occupation. Furthermore, if
there are any conflicts what are being learned then there is a
possibility to sort them out during the lecture itself. At the
same time there is an opportunity to share the knowledge
and experience with other professionals who are in the class.
If you do a technical post-graduate course you have be smart
in selecting the appropriate course which will open doors for
your technical career progress in the industry. For example,
in modern days Data Science and Information Security have
a higher demand. Hence if you select such field it will be
helpful for you to reach greater heights in your career path.
Disadvantages are, losing time with the family, less effective
in studies.
The prepared questionnaire consisted of questions
which mainly focused on the desire of the responder to do
higher studies, the type of the post graduate degree that the
responder has done or likes to, the particular responder’s
attitude on his or her employer about doing further studies
while working and advices for the freshers who enter the IT
workforce.
VIII. CONCLUSION
Sri Lankan IT sector is rapidly growing with
cutting edge technology platforms as well as
intelligent and capable workforce. An appropriate
post-graduate course offered by a credible
institution will surely enhance the knowledge of
each individual in the IT sector. As per the survey
outcome, professionals should consider the desired
and demanding pathways. For example, technical
and managerial paths are two different ways that
you need to be selective at a certain juncture of
your career.
As per the survey, most of the experienced
professionals have stated that higher studies should
be completed before many other commitments
coming on your way. 60% of the responders have
already concluded their post graduate degrees
which shows a good tendency. Many of them
mentioned that employers are not motivational
enough at the moment. If the employers motivate
their employees to carry on further education then
there will be a value addition to the organization in
return. The majority of the IT professionals had
wanted to do MBA while the next in line in MSc. It
is significant that 4 professionals out of the 30 who
responded, are keen on doing a PhD, which means
there are professionals who have research desire as
well.
With this result it is obvious that Sri Lanka is a
demanding higher educational hub for IT
professionals and there is room for quality degree
programs in Sri Lanka.
As a notable conclusion, doing a post-graduate
course with a sufficient experience in the industry
and before you reach the managerial level is very
important and useful. In addition, as per the
survey, the tendency to follow a post-graduate
course is on the “high” side as far as the Sri Lankan
IT professionals are concerned.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Credit must go to all the IT professionals who responded
me with their responses using their valuable time. And also, it
is worth to give due credits to current employer Seebo
Networks Lanka (Pvt) Ltd for giving me the opportunity to
be a visionary leader in the IT sector in Sri Lanka. Not
forgetting my family and teachers who were major pillars of
my success story of my career.
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