The Faculty of Management, which is the youngest and ninth Faculty of the University of Peradeniya, has a long history when it comes to management education in Sri Lanka. The University of Peradeniya which was established in 1942 commenced providing management education since 1962. Initially Management education at Peradeniya remained under the purview of the Department of Economics, Commerce & Statistics in the Faculty of Arts which was offering Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) (Special Degree) program under the Commerce section of that Department until the separate department, “Department of Management Studies”, was established in the Faculty of Arts in 2002. One of the objectives for the establishment of Department of Management Studies was to develop new management degree programs for undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels. Accordingly, Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree program was launched in the Academic year 2008/09 with the 2007 GCE A/L Commerce stream students and Postgraduate Diploma programs were also commenced. In order to further expand the management education at Peradeniya, a separate Faculty for the management education known as “Faculty of Management” was proposed which was later approved by the Gazette notification in October 2014 and the academic activities of the Faculty of Management commenced on January 28, 2015 with the appointment of Heads for five Departments, namely Business Finance, Human Resource Management, Management Studies, Marketing Management and Operations Management.
The Faculty of Management absorbs students from various avenues for different degree programs. The University Grant Commission (UGC) sends students directly to the Faculty for BBA degree program from the GCE Advanced Level Commerce Stream students. In the meantime, students for the B.Com degree are absorbed based on their performance at their first year commerce examination at the Faculty of Arts. In addition, the Faculty caters students for Bachelor of Science in Computation & Management which is joint degree program conducted in collaboration with the Faculty of Science. Further, the Faculty offers various management courses as by-subjects for the benefit of the students who follow Bachelor of Arts (Special) and Bachelor of Arts (General) degree programs at the Faculty of Arts.
In addition to the internal degree programs, the Faculty also offers the BBA (Online) degree program which is the only online degree awarded by the University of Peradeniya. Apart from this, the Faculty offers the Diploma in Management & Development program through the Centre for Distance & Continuing Education (CDCE) of the University of Peradeniya. Further, the Faculty offers two postgraduate degree programs, namely Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting & Finance and Postgraduate Diploma in Management and PhD programs through the Postgraduate Institute of Humanities & Social Sciences (PGIHS) of the University of Peradeniya.
As part of the strategic plan, the Faculty of Management intends to expand its portfolio in line with the development taking place in the field of management and accounting by introducing new degree programs at undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels and student & staff exchange programs through International collaboration.
