The state university system in Sri Lanka is characterised by free tuition, central administration and an affirmative action policy based on geographical region aimed at reducing inequality in access to higher education. Using administrative data on applicants for university admission, we study the effectiveness of the policy in targeting under-privileged regions and students and test for academic mismatch among medical students. We find that the policy ensures representation of disadvantaged regions while effectively targeting disadvantaged students. However, beneficiaries of the policy lag slightly behind the rest and this mismatch cannot be explained away by differences in university quality, though the estimated mismatch is likely to be an upper bound of mismatches occurring across the university system. These results suggest that region-based targeting is a viable alternative to the more common race/caste based affirmative action policies.

斯里兰卡的国立大学系统的特点是免费学费，中央行政管理和基于地理区域的平等权利行动政策，旨在减少高等教育机会的不平等。我们使用大学入学申请者的行政数据，研究该政策在针对贫困地区和学生的有效性，并测试医学生之间的学业不匹配。我们发现该政策确保了弱势地区的代表性，同时有效地针对弱势学生。然而，政策的受​​益者略微落后于其他人，这种不匹配不能用大学质量的差异来解释，尽管估计的不匹配可能是整个大学系统中发生的不匹配的上限。