Based at Mihintale, 10 miles outside Anuradhapura, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka is a public institution which became Sri Lanka’s 11th university in 1996.
It was created by the amalgamation of a network of affiliated colleges formed in the 1970s and 1980s to bring higher education to districts previously under-served by it.
It opened with faculties of social science and humanities, management studies, agriculture and applied sciences, and subsequently added medicine and allied sciences in 2006 and technology in 2017.
Management studies is now the largest faculty. Management, applied sciences and technology are located together with the administration on the main campus at Mihintale. The Centre for Distance and Continuing Education, serving 4,500 students, was opened in 2023.
Agriculture, which offers accommodation to all undergraduate students, operates at Puliyan Kumala while medicine and allied sciences are based at Saliyapura and are taught at Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital, the third largest in Sri Lanka serving a population of 1.6 million.
Students, who are offered a range of courses in Sinhalese, Tamil and English, are accommodated in 22 hostels.
