It was predictable that adjustments to the Gate programme, a programme of uncontested and unmonitored government funding for tertiary level education, would draw protests and claims of discrimination whatever the adjustments made.
From the reactions so far, the requirement for students coming from households earning above $10,000 to now have to pay a portion of their tertiary level fees has been the strongest.
The other adjustment that has drawn quite an amount of opposition is the change to having people 50 and over being no longer able to be supported in their desire for a tertiary level education by Gate funds.
In this instance, Education Minister Garcia explained that someone at 50 would have had a couple decades of salaried work and should therefore be in a position to pay for his/her education.
Plus, according to Minister Garcia, when someone graduates at that age, the length of time that he or she has to pay back in service to the country would be quite short.
Those are good arguments especially as the Minister places them in the context of Government revenue being seriously diminished compared to previous years. Of course it does not mean there aren’t good opposing arguments.
But on the positive side, the UWI Guild of Students expressed satisfaction with the fact that the new arrangements requiring those students whose parents fall within the $10,000-plus income group to be given a year’s grace period before they will have to pay a portion of the university fees.
And there are sure to be other groups of people affected in one way or the other by the adjustments who will feel unfairly treated.
That cannot be helped; but as the Minister of Education, the Prime Minister and others in the government and even outside of the Government have noted, the dramatic fall in revenue to the Treasury had to be considered and measures to reduce government spending taken.
But those matters apart, the real challenge to state funding of education at all levels, but more so at the tertiary level has to do with the value that is gained by the economy and society from such funding.
Several billions of dollars have been spent in the education system over the last decade, but has such levels of spending been analysed for direct benefit. What of the efficiency in the spending; was there significant leakage through corrupt practices and just plain old inadequacy of quality accounting practices for the monies spent?
The real challenge now for state-funded education at the tertiary level would have to be the contribution being made to research and innovation, to meeting the real needs of the economy in technical and non-technical areas of operations.
From reports the number of On-the-Job positions to occupy graduates in simple areas of clerical work is quite high. Moreover, amongst those graduates there are engineers and scientists who have been funded without a purpose.
After 50 years and many attempts to tinker with the education system to produce secondary school graduates and a few thousand at the tertiary level, the time is now to focus it on what are the real educational needs to be met in the interest of T&T and how is the state to fund a portion of those needs.
Adjustments to state funding of Gate in the short term for revenue purposes are fine, but what of the long term?
The private sector also has to become more involved in contributing to producing the kind of postgraduates research and innovative products and services needed for growth and development.