TRAINING IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF UNIVERSITY ACADEMICS: A CRITICAL CASE FOR LONG TERM FOREIGN TRAINING PROGRAMMES

Abstract

Training and Development is a formal process of changing employee behavior and it will enhance employee job performance and organizational overall performance. Training is an investment in people, benefiting both the employer and employee. In an ideal employer-employee situation, the investment in teaching allows an employee to do the job better (Bernard, 1995). University academics in Sri Lanka privileged with many long term foreign training programmes for their career development through the intervention of the state, foreign governments and other foreign organizations. Though the investment for those training programmes is high, there are some controversy issues relating to the training impacts for the University and the country. Therefore, the research mainly focused on the analysis of direct impact of long term foreign training on the academics, University system and the nation. In fact, the main objective of the study was to provide tangible information on what kind of impact would be occurred due to the training programmes given to University academics in Sri Lanka. The study targeted the academics in the Sri Lankan Universities which are having experiences on long term foreign training. The research was done using both questionnaire survey and personal interviews focusing on purposively selected 250 university academics. The results revealed that there is a significant impact on the individual development by the long term foreign training by improving technical knowledge and skills. Also the University academics have contributed tothe University development by updating the course modules using the training outcome (Mean: 1.11) and have given contribution for the structuring and destructing new degree programmes to the University (Mean: 1.06).University academics play less significant role in national development programmes and their contribution is marginal. It concluded that investment for the academics training programmes is timely important investment and the impact of the training programmes is significant for the individual, organizational and national development.

Key Words: Training and Development, Training Impact, Impact Assessment

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk