Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has giv­en a man­date for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Debe cam­pus to be com­plet­ed and out­fit­ted for a new in­take of law stu­dents by 2014. At the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the cam­pus on Mon­day af­ter­noon at the M2 Ring Road, Debe, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment was aim­ing for 60 per cent en­rol­ment at ter­tiary lev­el. She added that she was proud of the project which would bring de­vel­op­ment to all of south Trinidad. "We have to make sure that this cam­pus is built now, be­cause I do not want to have to wait ten or 20 years in the fu­ture to come back and open it," she said. "Let us make sure we com­plete it, staff it and get our stu­dents in­side of it," she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said since her Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice, ter­tiary-lev­el en­rol­ment had in­creased to 42 per cent. "For those who say this coun­try is too small for a sec­ond cam­pus, con­sid­er that one in every two stu­dents does not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion," she said. "We have 53,000 stu­dents en­rolled in pub­lic and pri­vate ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion. We have added 75,000 stu­dents who are en­rolled in the vo­ca­tion­al skills train­ing pro­gramme and over 200,000 stu­dents are in our pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools."

Promis­ing to pro­vide in­ter­na­tion­al qual­i­ty pro­grammes to stu­dents, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said three weeks ago the Gov­ern­ment signed a tech­ni­cal co-op­er­a­tive agree­ment for ed­u­ca­tion with the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia. "This will pro­mote aca­d­e­m­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in high­er ed­u­ca­tion in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, re­search and in­no­va­tion," she said. "Un­der this agree­ment, which al­so pro­vides the frame­work un­der which in­sti­tu­tions can col­lab­o­rate, both UWI and UTT signed a num­ber of mem­o­ran­dums of un­der­stand­ing with some of the world's top in­sti­tu­tions." Some of these, she added, in­clud­ed the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of In­for­ma­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy, the In­di­an In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, the En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute and the In­di­an In­sti­tute of Man­age­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said fac­ul­ty ex­changes and de­vel­op­ment of new pro­grammes would be­gin from Sep­tem­ber. "We al­so ex­pect teams of pub­lic sec­tor of­fi­cials to vis­it our shores over the next few months," she said. "These teams will work with our in­sti­tu­tions to de­vel­op re­view poli­cies. Sup­port will al­so be giv­en to de­vel­op­ing links with over 1500 in­sti­tu­tion­al modes with the In­di­an In­sti­tu­tion­al Na­tion­al net­work. This will be im­por­tant for us and link us to In­dia's largest in­sti­tu­tion­al data­bas­es," she added. Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that T&T's ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions would ben­e­fit from in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion with top for­eign uni­ver­si­ties.