Guarantors should be instituted within Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses (Gate) systems to ensure students' costs are paid. The suggestion was proposed by Senate Vice President Lyndira Oudit on Friday during a joint select committee meeting with Gate officials. Oudit was among committee members discussing solutions to ensure T&T got its value from the Gate education system.
Oudit said the cess loan system of years ago utilised a guarantor for students' loans and that had worked very well. She said when Gate students could not pay costs or abscond without doing so, the guarantor would have to bear the responsibility.
Arts Minister Lincoln Douglas suggested the Gate?system should include a built-in requirement for students to do community service and give back to T&T. He recommended, for instance, that students getting $100,000 facilities gave back six months' community service to the country.
Gate's Anthony Webster (finance administrator) said many students fulfilled their obligations. Michael Dowlat (interim chairman of the Gate?standing committee) said programmes would not be dropped. He also said the concerns of PNM?La Brea MP?Fitzgerald Jeffrey-that communities like his did not get Gate access-would be taken into consideration.
Dowlat also assured that members of some communities would not be left behind if they did not have all the educational qualifications. He said several options were available, including bridging programmes and similar mechanisms, which ensured that a CEPEP employee, for instance, could access Gate tuition. He said a priority area to be introduced in September 2013 would blend academic and skills-based studies.
PNM?MP Alicia Hospedales, who asked if a means test would be reintroduced, was told by Gate's funding director Teresa Davidson that the means test was only instituted during the PNM administration's time in 2004. Davidson said it was removed in 2006 and would not be reinstituted. That point had been made by Science and Technology Minister Fazal Karim up to last week in the Parliament.
On queries about tuition for St George's University, Grenada, offered since the last PNM administration, Davidson said Gate only handled the pre-medicine three course at St George's, since it carried no certification and Gate requirements called for certification on courses.