"The government is just wasting money educating all these people for them to go abroad to make big money".
It is common as one discusses the many benefits and drawbacks to the continuation of the Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses (GATE) programme for someone to point out that GATE has done nothing more than assist more young people to leave T&T after graduation. This exodus of qualified citizens usually to more developed countries is known as brain drain.
However, contrary to popular belief, requests for employment visas to the three most popular destinations for skilled graduates (the USA, Canada and the UK), have at best remained constant since the advent of GATE.
So, where are these thousand of GATE graduates? They are all still right here in T&T starting businesses, or working in the local public and private sectors. Chances are nearly 20 per cent of the employed people you interact with on a daily basis has benefited from GATE in one way or another.
With the impending budget having to face the realities of depressed oil and natural gas prices on the world markets, the sustainability of GATE is a reality all citizens will have to contemplate if revenue projections remain suppressed.
In the IMF and World Bank brands of development economics, it is commonplace that these agencies first recommend that developing economies, like ours, examine the sustainability of all subsidies. GATE and the myriad social programmes will undoubtedly come under close scrutiny should the need arise.
In examining the sustainability of GATE, one of the first matters to be considered will be the public and private returns to the government's investment in GATE. On the public end, studies will be needed to ascertain whether the public benefits derived from having GATE outweigh the significant costs of the programme.
Has the expenditure on social transfers been reduced with more citizens accessing tertiary education?
Concomitantly, has tax revenue increased from the higher wages that usually accompany possessing a university degree?
On the private side, one would need to ascertain whether on a personal level, the average citizen is benefiting from the university degree GATE provides.
Has access to higher education improved for all citizens?
Has GATE resulted in better-paying jobs?
Are the right type of jobs available for the numerous graduates churned out each year by both public and private higher education institutions?
One of the real concerns–as more graduates are produced to be added to the local labour market–is overeducation. In the academic literature, overeducation is observed to be occurring when workers in the labour market are occupying positions that require less schooling than they possess, often at lower wages.
Overeducation is of real concern in an economy like T&T, with little economic diversification, because of the negative correlation between overeducation and productivity. The morale of these graduates is affected as they leave their programmes with hope of a better, well paying job.
Further, overeducation negatively affects the productivity of the workplaces where these graduates will eventually settle.
With little empirical evidence of benefit-cost analyses of the GATE programme and of the employment outcomes for GATE graduates, a local education researcher is attempting to find out what are the real returns to an investment in GATE for everyone involved � the government, the higher education community, the student, and the business community, among others. Such analyses are needed for the future of GATE to be strengthened.
Denzil Streete, a product of Morvant Anglican School and QRC. He is a PhD candidate specialising in the Economics of Education, at Teachers College at Columbia University. If you are a graduate who used GATE funding, feel free to contribute to his findings at www.TTGateStudy.com.