A study of bachelor's degrees in human resource management in three Sri Lankan leading state universities

Abstract

This paper pursues to explore and identify essential aspects of Human Resource Management (HRM) to be included in HRM education curriculum, to determine their sequence for right locations of HRM curriculum, to develop a framework for evaluation of quality of Bachelor’s degrees in HRM, and to apply the developed framework for three cases in Sri Lanka. Being explorative and descriptive this study was carried out by using a desk research based on well-known textbooks, a survey based on the Nominal Group Technique (NGT), and an evaluative framework based on nine criteria. For the purpose of evaluation of quality of Bachelor’s degree in HRM three programs were selected from three leading state universities in Sri Lanka. The results of the study generated 17 essential aspects of HRM for inclusion of HRM education curriculum. The experts’ sequence of those aspects is starting with introduction to HRM and ending with sustainable HRM. And an objective evaluative framework containing nine criteria such as HRM curriculum content, appropriate location of the courses in the curriculum structure, availability of internship, duration of the internship, availability of independent study, duration of the independent study, coverage of the core skills set, availability of graduate profile, and intensity of graduate profile. The application of the objective evaluation framework resulted in revealing that the quality levels of the Bachelor’s degrees of the three selected leading state universities are not at excellent rating standard implying certain areas of improvement. The results of the study may be used for curriculum development, determination of sequence of courses in the curriculum structure and enhancement of quality level of Bachelor’s degrees in HRM.