Plymouth University collaborates with NSBM

The Plymouth University of UK entered in to a collaboration with National School of Business Management as the culmination of several years of academic relationship with Sri Lanka particularly in the arena of enterprise and entrepreneurship teaching with two of the country’s top universities.

Plymouth Business School

Associate Dean (International)

Professor Simon Payne Picture by Sumanachandra Ariyawansa

“We have identified the National School of Business Management (NSBM) as our partner in Sri Lanka to work with Plymouth University to offer degrees. The Plymouth University is one of the world’s top universities and is ranked number 60 among the top modern universities in the world,” Plymouth Business School Associate Dean (International) Professor Simon Payne told Daily News Business .

“We have international connections in a number of countries in addition to working with Sri Lanka. We believe that there is substantial interest in undertaking an UK university degree. As we have identified the demand we are concentrating on six subject areas such as Accounting and Finance, International Management, Marketing, Tourism and Hospitality Management and Operational and Logistics Management and Computing where four subjects will be launched initially,” he said.

The degree programmes are scheduled to be launch today moving forward with the partnership with NSBM. Students will have the opportunity to commence studies from September.“We will be working with our partners and the study programme will commence using existing facilities in Colombo. However, the state-of-the-art education complex by NSBM at Pitipana Homagama would be ready by 2014 where the foundation stone was laid last week. This will be constructed at a cost of Rs 6 billion as a modern university structure in a 26 acre land.

This is a major investment and we are confident of the country’s primary and secondary education system where students were prepared to undertake degree programmes. As NSBM has a proven track record of delivering degree programmes of leading recognized universities, the collaboration will be fruitful, he said.

There will be 300 students enrolled for the first year 50 each for all six subjects.

The government support towards the collaboration is excellent and we could witness the progress made by Sri Lanka since the war ended. The highway is a major development. We are happy to become a part in the country’s education system, he said.

On the other hand, the Plymouth University has a strong record on high employability, one of the features of an enterprise university. It has many connections with the industry and we believe that NSBM is also well connected. It’s about the whole approach of the degree which is focus on employability skills and capacity building.

“We are looking forward to professional accreditation where it is necessary to improve on employability. The programmes are taught by a mixture of both local and international staff. There will be substantial lecturing by foreign staff at the final year of the three year degree programme. The partnership with NSBM has the distinct feature of being well focus and genuine in delivering Plymouth University degree, Prof. Payne said.