By Dr  Sarath Obeysekera

Sri Lanka continues to produce thousands of graduates every year. Universities proudly hand over degrees in engineering, management, science, and technology. Parents celebrate. Politicians boast about literacy and education statistics. Yet many of these young graduates enter the real industrial world completely unprepared for modern global employment.

The uncomfortable truth is that a university degree alone is no longer enough.

Recently, I spoke with a Sri Lankan engineer who once worked at the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and is now employed in Qatar with  McDermott International, one of the world’s major offshore engineering and energy companies. Though academically qualified in Sri Lanka, he understood early that survival in the global oil and gas industry required far more than a framed degree certificate.

He acquired internationally recognised certifications in:

• Welding technology
• Non-destructive testing (NDT)
• Quality assurance systems
• Offshore safety procedures
• International fabrication standards

Those qualifications made him employable internationally.

He explained something Sri Lanka’s education planners still fail to understand: in the global industrial market, many employers hardly care about your BSc degree unless it is supported by practical industrial accreditation and hands-on competence.

The oil and gas industry, shipbuilding sector, offshore construction field, and advanced manufacturing industries demand certifications under globally recognised systems such as:

• ISO standards
• API standards
• ASME certification
• Lloyd’s Register
• DNV
• ABS

A graduate who possesses these qualifications immediately becomes more valuable than someone holding only academic credentials with no industrial exposure.

Sri Lanka’s tragic mistake is treating vocational training as education for weaker students while universities are reserved for the elite.” That outdated mentality has destroyed the country’s industrial competitiveness.

Germany, South Korea, Singapore, Norway, and even Middle Eastern countries have integrated vocational competence directly into higher education. Students graduate not merely with theoretical knowledge but with certified practical capability.

In Sri Lanka, however, many graduates leave university without ever touching industrial equipment, entering fabrication yards, participating in commissioning work, or understanding field realities.

An engineer who has never welded cannot properly supervise welding quality.

An engineer who has never entered a dry dock cannot fully understand ship repair.

A mechanical graduate who has never worked with industrial tolerances or non-destructive testing equipment becomes dependent entirely on technicians.

This is one reason foreign companies often prefer technicians from countries with strong vocational systems over academically qualified graduates from countries that focus only on theory.

During my own career in shipbuilding and marine engineering, we rarely looked first at age or university prestige. We looked for competence. We looked for people who could solve problems on site. We valued internationally recognised industrial accreditation, chartered qualifications, practical exposure, and the ability to work under pressure.

A young graduate with API welding inspection certification or ASME quality training can often outperform someone holding only academic distinctions.

Sri Lanka must urgently reform its entire higher education philosophy.

The University Grants Commission should make industrial vocational certification compulsory alongside university education. Engineering, science, and technical students should graduate with:

• Industrial safety certification
• Practical workshop exposure
• Quality assurance training
• Welding or fabrication knowledge
• International standards awareness
• Internship experience in real industries

Otherwise, we will continue producing graduates for unemployment queues while importing foreign expertise for our own infrastructure projects.

The country talks endlessly about development, ports, offshore energy, shipbuilding, LNG terminals, industrial zones, and manufacturing expansion. But who will do the work?

Development does not happen through PowerPoint presentations and university convocation speeches.

It is built by skilled hands, disciplined technicians, competent engineers, certified inspectors, and practical industrial knowledge.

Sri Lanka does not lack intelligence.

Sri Lanka lacks industrial readiness.

Until we combine academic education with internationally recognised vocational competence, our graduates will continue carrying certificates while other nations build the future.

Regards

Dr Sarath Obeysekera