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Sunday, July 13, 2025

GATE closed for delinquent students

...Govt will not fund aca­d­e­m­ic fail­ure says Karim

by

20120908

Aca­d­e­m­ic fail­ure will not be tol­er­at­ed by ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions across T&T as the Gov­ern­ment is crack­ing down on poor per­form­ers in the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme. Thou­sands of re­turn­ing ter­tiary-lev­el stu­dents were forced to pay their tu­ition fees this se­mes­ter be­cause their Grade Point Av­er­age (GPA) was be­low the min­i­mum re­quire­ment–rang­ing from 1.0 to 2.0.

Close to 1,100 stu­dents at the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (Costaatt), 2,000 stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine cam­pus and 900 stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) are fac­ing the loss of GATE fund­ing. How­ev­er, those who could af­ford to pay were al­lowed to con­tin­ue their pro­gramme of study while pay­ment plans were set up for oth­ers. Plans are al­so in the pipeline at one uni­ver­si­ty to get do­na­tions from cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to set up a fund to as­sist needy stu­dents.

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim yes­ter­day said the Gov­ern­ment will not fi­nance fail­ure. He as­sured that stu­dents with im­proved grades will re­ceive GATE fund­ing. At Costaatt, the 1,100 stu­dents were un­able to ob­tain a GPA above 2.0. In ad­di­tion, 300 stu­dents re­fused to meet with Costaatt's of­fi­cials for con­sul­ta­tion, fol­low­ing a meet­ing at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, on Au­gust 29.

Last year, Karim sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to clamp down on GATE due to some stu­dents' de­clin­ing per­for­mance and pro­gramme-hop­pers. He said, "On­ly on Fri­day I met with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai and we agreed to cer­tain con­di­tions for im­prov­ing the GATE out­put. "Cer­tain­ly one of those will be main­tain­ing the GPA. "It will al­so be based on per­for­mance in terms of both the train­ing in­sti­tu­tions and the stu­dents who are ben­e­fit­ting from GATE.

"GATE is be­ing paid for them and we ex­pect a min­i­mum per­for­mance." Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 2013, GATE fund­ing will dis­con­tin­ue for pro­grammes at ap­proved re­gion­al ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions, ex­cept for those that are not avail­able at ap­proved lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions in T&T, and al­so for pre-med­ical pro­grammes at St George's Uni­ver­si­ty, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 2013. This was based on the rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing out of a Au­gust 27, 2012 fi­nal Re­port of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee of the GATE Pro­gramme.

Gov­ern­ment will not fi­nance fail­ure

As at Au­gust, the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for GATE was ex­haust­ed, Karim ex­plained. Be­tween 2005 to 2011 GATE ex­pen­di­ture per an­num in­creased six­fold from $102 mil­lion to $650 mil­lion and over that pe­ri­od to­talled in ex­cess of $3 bil­lion. Karim said, "The Gov­ern­ment will not con­tin­ue to fi­nance fail­ure. "This is not about dis­en­fran­chis­ing any­one from ed­u­ca­tion. "This is to en­sure there is suc­cess in the sys­tem and main­tain­ing a cer­tain lev­el of per­for­mance and in­creas­ing the grad­u­a­tion rate."

Costaatt VP: Stu­dents were in­formed

Act­ing vice pres­i­dent of Costaatt, Dr Gillian Paul said of the 11,600 stu­dents en­rolled at the in­sti­tu­tion, ten per cent had failed the pass mark and were put on aca­d­e­m­ic pro­ba­tion. Last Sep­tem­ber, Costaatt's man­age­ment team no­ti­fied all stu­dents whose GPA was be­low 2.0. Paul said, "These stu­dents were al­so ad­vised to avail them­selves of tu­to­r­i­al ser­vices and ad­vice ses­sions with their fac­ul­ty which they nev­er turned up for.

"It's about 1,400 stu­dents, which in some ju­ris­dic­tions would be on av­er­age for a high­er ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion." Paul was speak­ing in an in­ter­view on Fri­day at the City Cam­pus. She said, "In­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, we had every­one on alert that this was a sce­nario that was quite se­ri­ous." Paul said Costaatt worked out a num­ber of op­tions for the stu­dents, which in­clud­ed putting stu­dents on a pay­ment plan and re­duc­ing their course load.

She said the col­lege re­cent­ly in­tro­duced an at­ten­dance form to keep on record for ad­min­is­tra­tive pur­pos­es. At the meet­ing in Ma­coya the 1,100 stu­dents were ad­vised of what they could do to im­prove their grades. She said, "These are tax­pay­ers' dol­lars and when you get mon­ey free for ed­u­ca­tion the de­ci­sion has been tak­en not to spend that on hous­ing, hos­pi­tals and roads. "Those are ar­eas of pub­lic ser­vices that need fund­ing."

Mean­while, vice pres­i­dent of stu­dent af­fairs, Dr Camille Samuel said the stu­dents were quite re­lieved when they re­alised that they would not have to leave school, but sign a pay­ment plan form in­di­cat­ing they were will­ing to pay for the cours­es they had signed up for in tranch­es. She said, "Most of them came cash in hand to pay be­cause they were warned. "Even now we have stu­dents who have start­ed the se­mes­ter and have not made any pay­ment but they must do so be­fore the end of the se­mes­ter."

Samuel said for three years some stu­dents avoid­ed pay­ing col­lege fees, which they felt was an en­ti­tle­ment. She said, "Now they are com­ing in­to a space where they have to pay and they are up­set." Paul in­ter­ject­ed say­ing if a stu­dent reg­is­tered for one course it would cost $900. To that, Samuel added, stu­dents would have to pay col­lege fees of $400 for the se­mes­ter, in­clud­ing li­brary, ad­min­is­tra­tive, ser­vices and tech­nol­o­gy.

She said, "So that would come up to $1,500...so a stu­dent's month­ly pay­ment might be a lit­tle over $200 for the five-month pe­ri­od. But that is sub­ject to the pay­ment plan worked out by the reg­is­trar." Costaatt Guild pres­i­dent De­vi­ka Ram­nar­ine said on Fri­day, that in De­cem­ber last year the col­lege in­formed stu­dents that those with poor grades would be un­able to con­tin­ue ac­cess­ing GATE the fol­low­ing Jan­u­ary. How­ev­er, she claimed, the col­lege was le­nient and did not im­ple­ment the pol­i­cy.

"Typ­i­cal stu­dents...they didn't pay at­ten­tion," she said. On Fri­day, Ram­nar­ine was ex­pect­ed to meet with col­lege of­fi­cials and stu­dents. Since Au­gust, many stu­dents ex­pressed their dis­sat­is­fac­tion on the Costaatt Face­book page over the de­vel­op­ment.

Prof Sankat: 2,000 stu­dents af­fect­ed

Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat said close to 2,000 stu­dents were ad­vised of their poor per­for­mance and that it did not come as a shock to them. He said of the 2,000 some were asked to with­draw while oth­ers had to fund their own tu­ition be­cause their cu­mu­la­tive GPA was be­low one. He said he made sug­ges­tions to the Cam­pus Bur­sar to make arrange­ments with a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion to pro­vide as­sis­tance to those who were will­ing to con­tin­ue their pro­gramme.

He said, "We are try­ing to help those who want to come back. "Some stu­dents took GATE for grant­ed and now they are more mo­ti­vat­ed to im­prove their grades be­cause they are fund­ing the fees." Sankat said a large num­ber of stu­dents opt­ed to pay af­ter they were ad­vised about the sit­u­a­tion over the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od. He said there was no protest about the de­ci­sion and the uni­ver­si­ty was do­ing its best to as­sist.

"I am sure that those who have to pay to re­cov­er will do well af­ter­wards," Sankat said. Act­ing UTT pres­i­dent Dr Fazal Ali said a stu­dent who fell un­der the 2.0 GPA would be placed on aca­d­e­m­ic pro­ba­tion and mon­i­tored. "They are asked to do re­me­di­al work to build skills. "Once they are on pro­ba­tion they have to go on a pay­ment plan be­cause in many cas­es many chil­dren are im­pov­er­ished. "We are try­ing to help get do­na­tions from cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to help needy stu­dents," Ali said.

Fund­ing di­rec­tor: Stu­dents must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

Di­rec­tor of the Fund­ing and Grants Ad­min­is­tra­tion Di­vi­sion (FGAD) Tere­sa David­son said Costaatt had the re­sults of every stu­dent and should not send a GATE ap­pli­ca­tion for a stu­dent who had a low GPA. Be­tween 2005 to 2011, the Gov­ern­ment dis­bursed $122,764,111 to Costaatt for GATE. David­son said the col­lege's fees were the low­est among the three ma­jor pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions.

She said all was not well in the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions which were ex­pect­ed to mon­i­tor stu­dents' per­for­mance on be­half of the FGAD. She said, "A lot of the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions were not do­ing what they were sup­posed to do and the stu­dents in the pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions are mi­cro-man­aged by us." She said stu­dents have to be cleared be­fore they ap­plied for GATE. "We be­gan to re­alise that things are not as it should be in the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions," she said.

She said pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions were writ­ten to last year ad­vis­ing them to en­force the min­i­mum GPA and that they had "to put things in place." David­son said, "Stu­dents have to start tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their ed­u­ca­tion."

Min­istry: Stu­dents re­quired to main­tain GPAs

Stu­dents who ac­cess GATE are re­quired to main­tain their GPAs as stip­u­lat­ed by their rel­e­vant ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. In­for­ma­tion about ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and GATE pro­vid­ed by the min­istry ear­li­er this year, stat­ed that while a sec­toral tar­get had not been set for grad­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, stu­dents were re­quired to main­tain in­sti­tu­tion­al rel­e­vant min­i­mum GPAs to ac­cess GATE fund­ing.

"The min­i­mum GPA for stu­dents to qual­i­fy for GATE ranges be­tween 1.0 and 2.0 at pub­lic and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions. "In cas­es where in­sti­tu­tions do not use the GPA sys­tem, a pass or fail sys­tem is ap­plied to en­sure com­pli­ance with the per­for­mance stan­dards of the GATE pro­gramme," the min­istry stat­ed.

The GATE agree­ment which has to be signed by stu­dents states that any breach of the agree­ment or with­draw­al from the pro­gramme by fail­ure on his/her part to at­tain the re­quired per­for­mance stan­dard as es­tab­lished in re­spect of the spec­i­fied pro­gramme, will de­ny the stu­dent fur­ther el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for fund­ing by the Gov­ern­ment un­less ap­proved by the min­istry.

The min­istry said the lat­est fig­ure avail­able for en­rol­ment/stu­dent ac­cess to the GATE pro­gramme for the fis­cal year 2009/2010 was 52,406. In late Ju­ly, Karim said 52,341 stu­dents were en­rolled at the three ma­jor ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions for this year.


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