Den­zil Mo­hammed

"Oh my God, I went to UWI!"For the first time in my life, I felt like Luke Sky­walk­er. Her words hit me like Darth Vad­er's "I'm your fa­ther."It's not of­ten one meets a Tri­ni in a place like Boston. It's per­haps rar­er to find some­one who knows any­thing fac­tu­al about T&T, that we don't speak Span­ish or "Hin­du," for in­stance. It's rarest to find some­one who ac­tu­al­ly went to a uni­ver­si­ty in T&T.

She was the daugh­ter of a Pak­istan-born busi­ness­man, beau­ti­ful girl, get­ting mar­ried lat­er this year. I was over­whelmed by the Tri­ni con­nec­tion I ac­ci­den­tal­ly found."Yes, I did a year at UWI. And I played mas in Tribe!"To be clear, UWI and mas band Tribe are not in­trin­si­cal­ly linked. So I probed as to what she thought of my al­ma mater."Yeah, it was cool." And then it was all about Tribe.

So much for the UWI ex­pe­ri­ence.Last week, UWI prin­ci­pal Clement Sankat not-so-tac­it­ly sug­gest­ed that UWI was not the best school. And he not-so-tac­it­ly sug­gest­ed that UWI lec­tur­ers were not the best, ei­ther.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, UWI can't af­ford that (at­tract­ing the best teach­ers and re­searchers in or­der to be­come a world-class in­sti­tu­tion). We do have good staff but we do not have the re­sources to at­tract the very best be­cause UWI's re­mu­ner­a­tion is not in the league of oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions," he said at a break­fast meet­ing on Wednes­day.So much for talk­ing up one's school.

En­dow­ments and ex­ams

He was re­spond­ing to "ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion ex­pert" Jamil Sal­mi who said "tal­ent–in­clu­sive of stu­dents, re­searchers and fac­ul­ty–abun­dant re­sources and favourable gov­er­nance are nec­es­sary for an in­sti­tute to be a top uni­ver­si­ty," ac­cord­ing to a news­pa­per re­port.Apart from em­bar­rass­ing his fac­ul­ty, Sankat's re­sponse was spot on.

The top uni­ver­si­ties in the world (al­most all pri­vate) al­so have the largest en­dow­ments. A large en­dow­ment gives you brag­ging rights. No uni­ver­si­ty de­gree nec­es­sary to re­alise that boast­ing a big en­dow­ment means you're go­ing to get the best bang for your buck.UWI is small, pub­lic and de­pen­dent on the gov­ern­ments of the re­gion which, by every in­di­ca­tion, seek sim­ply to ful­fil a nar­row eco­nom­ic im­per­a­tive and a per­func­to­ry po­lit­i­cal re­quire­ment.

That bodes well for no uni­ver­si­ty. And, in the case of UWI, it shows.In my own ex­pe­ri­ence, UWI felt like large­ly like an ex­ten­sion of high school. The em­pha­sis of stu­dents was sole­ly on do­ing well in ex­ams. And while the lec­tur­ers, re­searchers by trade, might have tried to var­i­ous de­grees to in­still the lofti­er, more ap­pro­pri­ate am­bi­tions in their stu­dents–crit­i­cal think­ing, de­sire to im­prove the lives of peo­ple, re­search­ing un­til your eyes bleed–they would on­ly do so much. Why? Well, maybe if they were paid more they'd try hard­er.

I speak in gen­er­al terms, of course. There are many lec­tur­ers who fit the bill (not the dol­lar bill). They are the ones whose names, favourite books and "ex­cit­ed faces" we re­mem­ber.But stu­dents in T&T are reared in an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that still stress­es pass­ing ex­ams. And with­out a con­cert­ed ef­fort on UWI's part to change that to what ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion is meant to be, it will re­main that way.

First-class to world-class

Hav­ing a world-class uni­ver­si­ty means more than re­duc­ing the fac­ul­ty-to-stu­dent and fac­ul­ty-to-staff ra­tios. I met some­one who did his PhD in lin­guis­tics un­der Noam Chom­sky and is now a se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur in mo­bile med­ical tech­nol­o­gy like wear­able med­ical de­vices and iPhone apps that check your blood sug­ar. So pro­mot­ing in­ter-dis­ci­pli­nary re­search, main­tain­ing and ex­pand­ing fields of study, and ditch­ing the util­i­tar­i­an mind­set for an ex­per­i­men­tal one are crit­i­cal to cre­at­ing a world-class uni­ver­si­ty.

An em­pha­sis on think­ing out­side the box is what en­gen­ders in­no­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and en­tre­pre­neur­ship, the things that make out­stand­ing in­di­vid­u­als and give a uni­ver­si­ty–and a coun­try–an edge in the glob­al mar­ket­place. This is what re­al­ly dis­tin­guish­es the top uni­ver­si­ties of the world: their stu­dents in­vent things, start things, change things, recre­ate things, not grad­u­ate and get a job in an of­fice.

This is where teach­ing and re­search col­lide, and an em­pha­sis on on­ly the for­mer pro­duces grad­u­ates, not peo­ple who can change the world.

Last­ly, fash­ion­ing a world-class uni­ver­si­ty means im­prov­ing many dif­fer­ent parts in­clud­ing stu­dent life which, at UWI, is gross­ly un­ful­fill­ing. One UWI Web site lists "10 Rea­sons Why UWI." Its ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar stuff un­der­scores the bor­ing sit­u­a­tion: "Un­cov­er the ac­tor in you by join­ing the Dra­ma So­ci­ety, try your hand at pol­i­tics by run­ning for Guild Pres­i­dent, or en­hance your mar­ketabil­i­ty by learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage."

Good lord! And ap­par­ent­ly UWI's lack of re­sources meant it couldn't hire a proof­read­er: UWI stu­dents get dis­counts at "cin­e­ma's and night clubs." Thank god for Tribe, I guess, or our in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents would have no good mem­o­ries.

Through no fault of the prin­ci­pal, UWI's mis­sion is to churn out as many grad­u­ates as pos­si­ble, to sup­ply the en­er­gy, med­ical, ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er fields with labour. That's im­por­tant. But what hap­pens next? What's the next stage of all of this? And are our grad­u­ates–and coun­try–pre­pared for it or will we have to seek out­side help?