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Research was conducted to investigate the reasons behind low enrollment to programmes offered by the Faculty of Engineering Technology (FET) of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) in Regional Centres away from the main campus. A preliminary study was conducted to identify the issues behind reduced enrollment, taking Kandy Regional Centre (KRC) as a case study. Preliminary study revealed that improvements are needed in five contrasting areas to improve the rate of enrollment. Necessary measures were undertaken to address the issues identified in the five areas and the enrollments in the academic years 2011 and 2012 were observed to have a significant increase. It was exploited whether the increased enrollment is due to the improvements adopted in the identified areas. Results of a questionnaire administered among new registrants to FET in KRC for the academic year 2012 indicate that the measures adopted have reached the potential learners increasing the rate of enrollment.

It has been observed that the students attending the bachelor’s degree programmes offered by the Faculty of Engineering Technology (FET) at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) take extraordinarily longer period to complete their degrees. The purpose of this paper is to identify the institutional barrier, student-related personal barrier and psychological barrier behind the prolonged duration of completion of the said degrees.

A well-developed questionnaire was administered among a selected sample of graduates who were awarded the Bachelor of Technology (Engineering) and Bachelor of Industrial Studies degrees within the past ten years.

Results indicate that institutional barriers such as poor academic counselling and guidance; laboratory sessions being inappropriate/not sufficient to understand the course material; inadequate facilities, such as library resources, and lack of laboratory facilities at the regional centres have contributed immensely to the lengthy duration taken to complete the degrees. Personal factors such as work-related challenges, travelling time and cost of commuting to the main centre located in Colombo and inability to spend the required time expected of the programme have played major roles in the prolonged completion. Results indicate that the cost of tuition is not a major barrier for on-time completion. Psychological barriers such as possessing a limited repertoire of study strategies, lack of understanding of open and distance learning (ODL) methods and deficiency of continuous motivation had a tremendous impact on the delayed graduation. A high satisfaction rate was observed regarding the ODL tools that were used within the programmes and the formative and summative evaluation criteria. Approximately 75 per cent of the sample approved of the five remedies suggested.

Findings of this study provide insight for shortening the duration of the bachelor’s degree programmes offered by the FET at the OUSL.