The Sunday Guardian report of the forensic audit into the University of Trinidad and Tobago reveals the university is clearly plenty more "Trinidad" than "university." The story, headlined "Multi-million dollar feeding frenzy at UTT," disclosed such only-in-Trinidad gems as a 1,200-strong staff for a student population of 8,000-potentially giving the UTT a better undergraduate student-faculty ratio than the 9:1 postgraduate courses at the University of Texas in Austin-and a staff member who collected $1.5 million ($40K a month for three years) without ever bothering to actually turn up at any of the university's nine campuses; where other universities offer students distance learning, the UTT faculty seems to have perfected distance earning. Nine campuses on an island half the size of Greater London employing 1,200 people to teach 8,000 (the University of Texas in Austin, prized for its low 34:1 undergrad-lecturer ratio, is four times more crowded) at a cost estimated at over $3-400 million and a deficit of $67 million annually; now if that isn't higher Trini education, nothing is. UTT chairman Curtis Manchoon was reported as saying some workers did not know what they were doing, while others held outside jobs, and that nobody wanted their work-time recorded. Sounds like Parliament, you think, but the only difference between the UTT and Dewd, the inner city make-work scheme notorious for the "ghost gangs" who didn't even bother to make up real fake names for their non-existent workers, might well be the size of the pay-packets collected: don't be surprised if you find out the UTT has, on its payroll, Prof Jennifer Lopez and Simon Cowell; you find yourself hoping a little irony might exist at tertiary level through some enterprising fraudster siphoning off state funds as Dr Vybz Kartel. The story also reported one lecturer collecting a salary of close to $100K (presumably monthly-that is some good firetrucking lecturing) and a foreign music teacher with a housing allowance who had no students whatever in his class for three years.
Additionally, more than half of the 130 "high-performing" students on full athletic scholarships in the $100 million "High Performance Sports Unit" simply dropped out-but not before using the High Performance Sports Unit car to go nightclubbing; no fuss is recorded. It's hard to imagine Oxford University being unconcerned about half its scholars withdrawing from their courses-these are students promising enough to be awarded full scholarships, with housing, meals and transport paid for by the State-but perhaps Oxford scholarship winners are more closely supervised by their professors than their chauffeurs, since they don't need cars, because there are a lot of nightclubs within walking distance of Oxford colleges. One unnamed student was awarded "a staggering $3.3 million scholarship;" and you find yourself wondering what in the world could be learned at the UTT at that cost; unless, of course, there is a new, low-profile Faculty of Astronautics. But the story really seems to suggest the UTT is a very Trini university when you find out that nepotism is seemingly encouraged. The story says "nepotism was also prevalent in UTT with family members of staff working in campuses... two relatives working in one department, a couple and siblings." A quote-presumably from chairman Manchoon-declares, "It is alleged that a mother hired a daughter. This is what we are trying to correct."But you know for sure the UTT is Trinidadian when you read between the lines (or "under the lines," as a Rastaman once mangled the expression into improvement in conversation with me). Muckraking stories are vital to the development of the responsibilities of citizenship: you've got to keep local politicians in check, especially if you subscribe to the view that any time a politician is speaking he is lying, and any time he is silent he is stealing. The presence of the word "staggering" in the report of the "staggering $3.3 million scholarship" is indicative-but the reader must discern for him or herself what it indicates: why is the scholarship described as "staggering?"
Is the bare figure of $3.3 million insufficiently impressive? In Trinidad-and in Trinidadian universities-it is always enough to "make as eef;" indeed, some might say that is the very foundation of Trinidad (to the extent it has any foundation at all, is not a castle or a hovel made entirely of sand). A story about a forensic audit, and the very audit, is in itself a good thing. But you find yourself wondering what good will come of it. Three years from now, when the current government has been booted out of office by a frustrated and exhausted electorate desperate for any change, just like the electorates who have voted in every general election since 1986, what is likely to be the result of a forensic audit of the UTT? Or of travel costs for relatives of those in high office? Or of any method whatever of disbursing state funds, when entrusted-a misleading word, in this context-to our politicians? If you said that three years from now the only difference between Sunday's story and the future UTT scandal story will be that the names have changed, you can move to the head of the class. Of sceptics. And you may find you are in a class by yourself. And you have no need of a staggering scholarship when you have the similar Trinidadian reality.
BC Pires is a High Performing Idler. E-mail your rumshop bursaries to him at bc@caribsurf.com
