Gail Alexan­der

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.