The present government’s philosophy on Gate, in keeping with its welfare leanings, is simply that any child/person who can qualify for tertiary education should be afforded that chance via government subsidy.
The amount of this subsidy depends on the income of the person’s family reducing to some 50 per cent of the fees if the monthly income of the family is above $30,000/month. Further, the Government is willing to guarantee student-loans and contribute to defraying some interest on these loans.
What is worth noting, according to the Principal of The UWI, St Augustine, is that the student fees make up just 20 per cent of the cost to run the campus, while apart from Gate, the Government also picks up the additional 80 per cent!
The UNC Opposition appears to share government’s welfare philosophy on Gate, only more so, as ensuring that all who are qualified receive tertiary education via Gate. However, they (the Opposition) sees that means testing will debar some, ignoring totally that there is indeed a student loan programme in place, ie the student can pay fees using a combination of government Gate subsidy and a loan repayable with minimum interest after graduation.
The Gate subsidy is funded from our taxes and rents earned from the energy sector. Hence, this restriction on Gate has been forced by the present reduction in rents, which suggests that if, as it is hoped, the energy sector rebounds the subvention to Gate could be more generous.
I have already written extensively on this subject which challenges the view that our Government has the responsibility to subsidise student fees above and beyond the 80 per cent of the economic cost to operate the UWI campus.
Tertiary education expenses are an investment in the student to produce a person that can earn more than if he/she were not so educated/trained. This investment does not in general benefit the general public (as does such an investment in primary and secondary education) in the general democratic activities of our State. Hence, the family of any student, so qualified to enter university, should be helped to invest in the student’s future, via both access to loans that are repayable on graduation and the on-going 80 per cent campus subsidy by the government.
The recent statement by Government also says that Gate will not be allowed on post graduate courses unless they are in areas of study that the government deems to be appropriate for our socio-economic development; areas that have not yet been announced.
If the presumption is that such post graduate programmes prepare their graduates to earn higher salaries then this approach is consistent with a student loan programme. Still, it is a fact that some 79 per cent of our graduate work force emigrates; many because they cannot find jobs that meet their qualifications and salary expectations. Thus, any subsidisation on tertiary education for these emigrants is an investment lost to this country, if we really thought that such an investment would have contributed to our socio-economic development.
Indeed we have to make a deliberate attempt to diversify the economy and given our small size and the need to build new exporting companies the current imperative is to choose a limited set of technologies and areas—foresighting—in which we intend to engage the global economy.
Hence Government’s decision on which post graduate, or any other programme to support via subsidisation depends on a precise definition of the areas in which we plan to develop critical support services and global competitive advantage. As important, is putting in place the national innovation system—centres of excellence, marketing, market development, company generation—that will require, employ, these targeted graduates who should be bound and on contract to so serve.
Simply saying that we need some specialist engineers or computer scientists or whatever without the innovation system, adds to the pressure to emigrate.
In this plantation driven by foreign direct investment, such an approach at development is new. Hence the political leadership of this country have an enormous challenge on their plate. Our development depends on their performance at the wicket.
Mary K King,
St Augustine