The history of Institute of Human Resource Advancement (IHRA), University of Colombo runs into nearly four decades when its predecessor; Institute of Workers Education (IWE) was established in 1975  under the Ordinance No.11 of 1979 which was amended by Ordinance No. 01 of 2006. The IHRA is one of the institutes of University of Colombo, the oldest university of the country and which falls into top 1000 universities. Being an institute, its academic activities are subject to closely scrutiny of University of Colombo, thus IHRA is bound to maintain high standards in its all-academic affairs and to continue good traditions that any higher learning institute has to preserve.

IHRA was initially started with the purpose of provide facilities for comprehensive higher- level education of accepted quality to all categories of workers enabling them to develop skills, leadership qualities and understand their responsibilities as a workers so that they can make an effective contribution in their work place and mainly offered Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree until 1983 however, in1986 IHRA started offer degree programme namely Bachelor of Labour Education (BLE). During 2007 IHRA expanded its academic activities and also began to offer Masters degrees. In 2006 the Institute of Workers Education was renamed as IHRA.

In 2015-2016, IHRA revisited its academic programmes and decided to offer Master in Human Resource Management, Master in Business Management, Master of Science in Geo-Informatics, Master of Science in Service Management, Master of Science in Disaster Analysis, Management and Mitigation, Executive Diploma in Project Management,  Executive Diploma in Human Resource Management, Executive Diploma in Service Management, Diploma in Service Management, Diploma in Management, Diploma in Drug Abuse Management Studies, Diploma in Tamil as additional language, Certificate Course in Computer Applications, Certificate Course in English, Certificate Course in English for Teachers, Short Course in English for School Leavers, Certificate Course in Spoken English and Foundation Certificate Course in English.

During its nearly four decades’ history, IHRA has seen many changes and new developments within its environment to name few -growth of private sector, emergence of knowledge economy and globalization of workforce are noteworthy. In its attempts to embrace these developments, IHRA has continuously evolved and its original purpose-“educating work-groups” has gain a new meaning. As at present ‘work-group’ means ‘managerial/professional work group’, and, IHRA is committed to develop human talent of ‘managerial/professional work group’ as well.

Consequently, IHRA strives to develop human talents towards a progressive society and believes that our society can and must progress. The progress that we are looking for is continuous and gradual. The progress that we aim is holistic embracing our own economic, social, cultural and political aspirations. We believe that the progressive society is the society that makes social, cultural and political aspirations of people of that society a reality. Thus all what we do for developing human talents are guided and shaped by this fundamental belief.

IHRA is looking forward to become an institute of excellence totally committed to advance the human resource as mature, intelligent ‘knowledge-users’ equipped to face challenging global situations and fortify the human foundation of our national development. Towards this end, IHRA is going through a major transformation while consolidating rich academic tradition and high academic standards inherited from University of Colombo. This transformation aims at obtaining local and global accreditations for its academic programmes, meeting standards of good governance, to become most after sought employee brand and a socially responsible public institute. We see IHRA as a full pledge public higher learning institute offering certificates to higher degrees for all category of workgroups in 2022. We see IHRA as a regionally competitive higher learning institute located in Colombo-the most dynamic mega police in the South Asia in 2022. We see that students and alumnus of IHRA is effectively contributing to transform Sri Lanka as a progressive society.