Are SLIIT students not hired for IT jobs ? Are they getting paid less ? There was a big debate about this a while back , And if your a software engineer who has time to browse around the blog sphere you should be aware of this. And when it was dragged up again in the Sri Lankan Programmers yahoo group I thought I should write a post about it giving my opinion.

First thing you have to realize is that SLIIT is a university dedicated to IT and more than 1000 students graduate from SLIIT every year. You cant expect all of them to be top notch programmers. And lets not forget the fact that the students who are going to normal government universities got there because they work hard and have some talent in them. So you'd except them to perform better than the ones who didn't get there. Its just like Royal College producing the best results in A/L etc , well they should produce them since they take the best of the lot after O/L. So its foolish to say that the standards maintained at SLIIT are low by looking at only few students. If the standards are low SLIIT students wouldn't be able to achieve things like Gold and Silver Awards at NBQSA , Gold at APICTA and Gold in Techno 2007. So I think its about time the critics of the SLIIT degree understand the above facts before criticizing.

And a final word about the salary levels given in the forum, The guy who posted cited his sources and they included friends at IFS as well. I work at IFS and I can assure you that no one works there for a salary around 15-20 k as mentioned in the post. He has mentioned many other places and I have to admit I don't know friends in all of them, But the SLIIT guys that I know who works in Virtusa and MIT also get more than 20k as mentioned in the post. So about the salary levels what I can say is that the guy who posted didn't do his research properly.

P.S. - If you are a software engineer and still haven't joined joined SL Programmers Yahoo group I suggest you join now. join SL Programmers