Drive through Colombo or its ever-developing outskirts and the message is unavoidable.
Smiling teenagers beam down from billboards asking, “After O-levels? What next?” The implication is clear: why endure the rigour of A-levels when a faster, shinier, allegedly smarter alternative is waiting just around the corner? Eight months, they promise. A shortcut to university. A head start in life. What these advertisements do not disclose is the ethical cost of this promise, or the intellectual and emotional damage quietly inflicted along the way.
University foundation programmes were never intended to replace A-levels. Their original purpose was limited and defensible: to support students who narrowly missed university entrance criteria by providing a year of academic preparation before commencing a degree. In theory, the purpose of a foundation programme is to bridge a gap. In practice, in Sri Lanka today, it has increasingly become a conveyor belt which is efficient, profitable, and academically fragile. Almost every private tertiary institution positioning itself as “premier” now offers such programmes, aggressively marketed as alternatives rather than supplements to A-levels. Parents, anxious and often overwhelmed by a hyper-competitive education culture, are reassured that their child will “get into university faster” and “avoid unnecessary pressure”. But education is not a race, and intellectual maturity cannot be compressed without consequence. If two years are considered the minimum period required to absorb A-level content, it is reasonable to ask how an eight-month programme can realistically equip students with the analytical, linguistic, and critical thinking skills required for university-level study (mind you, the soft skills required to cope with university life and beyond are not even considered at this point!).
The uncomfortable answer is that it often does not and, increasingly, it does not need to. Standards are quietly recalibrated to fit a commercial model. What passes for foundation education is frequently diluted: content is simplified, expectations are lowered, and assessments are softened. Lecturers report being under pressure, implicit or otherwise, to ensure pass rates remain commercially viable. Resits, while defensible in principle, are too often structured to guarantee progression rather than test competence. Retention becomes the priority, not rigour.
The consequences are predictable. Students enter degree programmes underprepared, struggling to write coherently, read critically, argue logically, or manage independent learning. Some fail and leave. Others drop out quietly. A significant number are simply passed again, particularly if they remain within the local system rather than transferring to an international partner university where scrutiny may be less accommodating. Universities, once imagined as spaces for intellectual risk, debate, and the expansion of ideas, increasingly resemble social enclosures instead. Attendance is optional, disruption commonplace, and academic seriousness the exception rather than the norm. Only a minority of students appear genuinely invested in learning, even as institutions continue to expand, collect fees, and market aggressively.
That marketing itself raises ethical questions. It is widely acknowledged within the sector that millions of rupees may be spent promoting a single intake. In such an environment, admission criteria can become negotiable. Students who struggle to meet even basic foundation entry requirements are sometimes accepted to fill quotas and justify marketing expenditure. Once enrolled, many find themselves unable to cope, either disengaging entirely or disrupting classes when they cannot keep up. Neither outcome serves students, peers, or lecturers, yet both are tolerated in the interest of maintaining numbers.
Parents and students, meanwhile, are drawn into emotionally binding commitments. Many families relocate students to Colombo from Kandy, Mannar, and other distant parts of the country, investing heavily in accommodation and living expenses. Once uprooted, withdrawal becomes psychologically and financially daunting. Even when doubts surface, the sunk cost keeps families locked in. Few pause to examine the small print. Fewer still realise that foundation programmes are institution-specific. A student who drops out does not hold a transferable qualification; instead, they return to the starting line. A-levels, by contrast, remain globally recognised across examination boards and jurisdictions. The promised shortcut often leads not forward, but nowhere.
Facilities and student support frequently fail to match what glossy brochures promise. Toilets are often no better than public washrooms, with basic hygiene neglected. Recreational activities, an essential aspect of student development, quietly disappear even as campuses grow taller and signage grows larger. Classrooms are overcrowded, making meaningful teaching almost impossible. Lecturers, many underpaid or paid late, leave when better opportunities arise. Those who remain are stretched thin, demoralised, or underqualified. Academic leadership gives way to administrative expediency. Education becomes transactional: deliver slides, conduct assessments, move students along.
The impact is felt well beyond campus walls. Employers increasingly lament graduates who lack communication skills, emotional intelligence, social awareness, and critical thinking. This is not a failure of young people alone. It is the predictable outcome of an education industry that prioritises speed, scale, and profit over depth and discipline. Degrees are awarded, but capability is absent.
Perhaps the most telling insight comes from within the sector itself. In a discussion with a senior representative of one of Sri Lanka’s largest private tertiary institutions, the question of educational ethics was dismissed on the grounds that this was, after all, the corporate sector. The implication was clear: ethics were optional. That candid response stripped away any lingering illusion that these outcomes were unintended.
Education is not merely a private transaction between provider and consumer. It is a public trust. When that trust is weakened, the damage does not end at convocation ceremonies. It surfaces in workplaces, in leadership failures, and in civic life, slowly eroding the moral and intellectual fabric of society. The question, then, is not whether the education industry has lost its ethical compass. The evidence suggests that, in many cases, it already has. The more urgent question is whether Sri Lanka is prepared to confront what that loss is doing to its future - before the billboards stop asking “What next?” and begin answering “What went wrong?”
