Abstract:The phenomenon of Sri Lankan university academics migrating after their postgraduate education appears to have increased over the years. Migration of academics who are among the brightest in the academic profession has a severe adverse impact on the quality of higher education. There are strong reasons for the 'Brain Drain', such as incomes and living standards in rich countries being substantially higher and research facilities and opportunities being better in developed countries. This article attempts to analyse the distribution of migrant academics and the funding used by them from 1990 to 2012, and to identify the reasons which motivate academics to resign from their substantive positions. The survey revealed that the majority of these academics had paid back their bonds. They were experienced in their specialised areas, had benefitted from postgraduate education and international research in eminent universities and clearly represented a category of academics that can definitely make a contribution to the Sri Lankan university system. They pointed out, however, that the decision to migrate was not merely an outcome of attractive prospects overseas, but also due to frustrations and difficulties encountered in changing even minor procedures, a lack of collegiality and teamwork and a lack of readiness to adapt and change in the country and the university system.

Two research studies (Lekamge & Jayathilake, 2002; Jayathilake, 1996) which focused on the Continuous Assessment (CA) mechanism of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) had identified several problems such as lack of quality of the set assignments, limited comments on assignments, discrepancies among marking examiners, ill practices among student teachers and high turnround time of assignments and suggested long term and short term measures to those problems. As a result, the Faculty introduced several innovations namely course team approach, training workshops for marking examiners, Activity Based Assignment Day Schools and appointment of Centre coordinators for improving the quality of the CA mechanism. Having implemented those innovations for nearly three years, it has necessitated an exploratory research study to examine the effectiveness in improving the quality of the CA mechanism and to reveal how it could be further modified to maximize their potentials. The sample of the study included 290 student teachers representing four regional and two study centres of the OUSL, 104 marking examiners and 21 visiting academics of those centres. Exploratory interviews, questionnaires and direct observations were used as the main data collection methods of the study. They revealed that the majority of student teachers, visiting academics and marking examiners were satisfied with the new innovations and admired the positive changes taken place in setting, marking and monitoring of assignments. Finally the study