Kali­fa Clyne

Prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Pro­fes­sor Clement Sankat is ad­vis­ing stu­dents to seize op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed to them and make the best use of tech­nol­o­gy in or­der to suc­ceed in a quick­ly chang­ing world. Sankat gave the ad­vice while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress dur­ing the grad­u­a­tion and prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Hillview Col­lege, Tu­na­puna, on Thurs­day. "The tra­di­tion has al­ways been to look north but I ad­vise you to look south as Brazil is emerg­ing as one of the most de­vel­oped coun­tries in the world," said Sankat. He told grad­u­ates the world was chang­ing and new op­por­tu­ni­ties were be­ing pre­sent­ed but that these op­por­tu­ni­ties would be south of the equa­tor.

He ad­vised them not to lim­it them­selves in terms of ca­reer op­tions. Sankat said when he was young, the ca­reer op­tions were doc­tor or lawyer, but now tech­nol­o­gy was a ma­jor ca­reer op­tion. He salut­ed the Gov­ern­ment for the sup­port pro­vid­ed for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion costs. Hillview Col­lege, whose stu­dents re­ceived 21 na­tion­al schol­ar­ships in the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (CAPE) cel­e­brat­ed with nu­mer­ous awards and ac­co­lades be­stowed on the stu­dents.

One of the prizes award­ed to stu­dents was the first place prize giv­en to Form five stu­dent Rakesh Har­ri­lal for the sec­ondary schools es­say com­pe­ti­tion to com­mem­o­rate the 100th birth­day of Dr Er­ic Williams.

While pre­sent­ing the prize to Har­ri­lal, chair­man of the Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee Regi­nald Vi­dale laud­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Hillview Col­lege. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed great dis­ap­point­ment that Williams' al­ma mater Queen's Roy­al Col­lege did not par­tic­i­pate. The school is one of three Pres­by­ter­ian schools which earned the most schol­ar­ships in T&T. The oth­er two were Na­pari­ma Col­lege with 33, and Na­pari­ma Girls' High School with 29 schol­ar­ships.