Education, especially university education, is a key channel of social mobility in most developing countries and hence the distribution of opportunities for higher education is often regarded as the distribution of future wealth, status and power . In countries like Sri Lanka where university education is available only to a small minority, the competition therefore becomes very intense. Further problems arise, when in the context of a plural society each ethnic and religious group tends to evacuate the ratio of university admissions obtained by its members as an index of equality of opportunity or discrimination. University admissions thus cease to be the exclusive preserve of academics and became the concern of politicians and leaders of various groups and interests. What is attempted in this paper is a case study of the situation in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and the proposal of a solution to the problem. Blurb Source- Extract from article