Graduate Unemployment in Sri Lanka: A Review of Literature

Abstract

Education is one of the major criteria for measuring the progress of a nation. It is a key element of the wealth and prosperity of a nation(Ariyawansa, 2008). One of the main objectives of education, particularly of higher education, is to prepare students to pursue different careers in a national or international context. University education is the core of higher education. Universities are social institutions, which provide facilities for the higher intellectual needs of a community as regards both academic knowledge and professional training(Ariyawansa, 2008).The employment of graduates to increase anorganization’s intellectual capital is not a new phenomenon.  According to graduate unemployment in Sri Lanka, the highestunemployment rate was recorded by graduates from the Arts and Performing Arts disciplines (Tracer study of graduatesuniversities in Sri Lanka, 2018). Arts graduates are heavily under-employed in terms of their qualifications and heavily underpaid. Therefore,producing “employable graduates” has become the key challenge for all the Arts faculties in Sri Lanka (Ranasinghe&Logendra, 2015). The names of Art faculties will differ from university to university, that is Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Social Sciences, and Faculty of Arts.