The establishment of a fully-fledged University in Jaffna had been a long standing aspiration of the people of Jaffna. This was fulfilled when a Campus of the University of Sri Lanka was established in 1974 by an order made by the Honorable Minister of Education. The Campus became an independent and autonomous University bearing
the name University of Jaffna on January 01, 1979. The academic and administrative activities of the university are governed by the Universities Act. No. 16 of 1978. as last amended by Act No 1 of 1995.
From a small beginning in the thirty-acre campus of the then Parameswara College premises founded by the veteran philanthropist, Sir Ponnampalam Ramanathan, the University has grown enormously and is today the home of ten faculties with more than sixty academic departments and several service/academic/support units and centers, about 80 Km from Jaffna. In addition, a few more Faculties, Departments and Centres are scheduled for development and will, in time, further open the University’s door to the public and increase its role, responsibilities and commitments to the region around it.
The student population of the university is about seven thousand. This includes about six thousand two hundred internal students in the main campus and about five hundred postgraduate students. Although some students are housed in a few halls of residence, majority of the students find their own non-University accommodation.
The historical evolution of the Management Studies and Commerce was initiated in 1977with commencement of Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) Degree Programme under the Department of Economics in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Jaffna. The University Grants Commission (UGC) approved the Department of Commerce on 31 July 1982, and it began functioning on 18 December 1983. The initial intake of students was 28. The Department of Commerce and Management Studies was established on 1st of January 1986 and segregated into two separate departments as the Department of Management Studies and the Department of Commerce on 1st of
September, 1994. The Faculty of Management Studies & Commerce was established on 29th May 1999.
Department of Commerce initially offered Bachelor of Commerce degree in two fields of specialization as Bachelor of Commerce specialization in Accounting and Bachelor of Commerce specialization in Marketing. Department of Management Studies offered Bachelor of Business Administration in Financial Management and Bachelor of
Business Administration in Human Resource Management. Later, Faculty restructuring was carried out in 2010. Under the restructuring programme, the Department of Commerce was dispersed and four new departments were established namely Department of Accounting, Department of Financial Management, Department of
Human Resource Management and Department of Marketing. The staff of Department of Commerce and Department of Management Studies were reshuffled into the new departments. All four academic departments are offering Bachelor of Business Administration in respective fields of their specializations. Bachelor of Commerce
Degree program was no longer exist at that time.
University Grant Commission approval was granted to offer Bachelor of Commerce degree program and to re-establish the Department of Commerce in 2012 owing to regional, national, and global requirements. First intake in 2012 was 56 students. Two new hybrid fields of specializations were introduced from first batch onwards.
Department of Commerce educates students to become intellectually, critically and analytically competitive professionals in the Job Market. The main goal is to produce competent graduates with theoretical and practical knowledge in wide range of specializations, positive thinking, entrepreneurial attitudes, innovative and problem solving capacity, and communication and research skills and at the same time possess professional ethics, traits, belief goals and values and value judgment to serve to maximize the social wellbeing.