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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Prof Harris to step down as UWI vice chancellor

...re­gion­al govts owe UWI US$100m

by

20140511

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) vice chan­cel­lor, Prof E Nigel Har­ris is step­ping down one year ahead of sched­ule.Har­ris was ex­pect­ed to serve in his ca­pac­i­ty un­til April 2016, but has sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to make the move one year ear­li­er.The Sun­day Guardian spoke with Har­ris on Tues­day at the UWI's launch of the Diplo­mat­ic Acad­e­my, where he con­firmed the move to step aside.Af­ter one decade on the job, Har­ris said the time had come to let some­one else step in­to his shoes.

"There are so many things I would have liked to do, but I know oth­ers would come to do," Har­ris said.He said the in­ter­na­tion­al search for his re­place­ment had al­ready be­gun.The let­ter to col­leagues came just one day af­ter he con­firmed the de­ci­sion to step down."I am writ­ing to an­nounce that I shall demit the of­fice of vice chan­cel­lor in April 2015. By that time, I would have served for ten years as vice chan­cel­lor, which is about the time I be­lieve se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tors of or­gan­i­sa­tions such as ours should serve," he said.

Har­ris said while there was a lot to be grate­ful for–dou­bling of the uni­ver­si­ty's en­roll­ment to 50,000, dou­bling of ap­pli­ca­tions to 30,000 per year, es­tab­lish­ing the Open Cam­pus–there was still a lot of work to do.

Re­gion­al govt­sowe UWI US $100M

As Har­ris makes his move though, he said UWI was owed a mas­sive US$100 mil­lion in fees from mem­ber coun­try cam­pus­es.He not­ed that while the uni­ver­si­ty's rev­enue had been dou­bled in the past ten years, the debts of con­tribut­ing coun­tries have piled up."The wake of the glob­al eco­nom­ic col­lapse in 2008 has re­sult­ed in ar­rears in pay­ment by our gov­ern­ments in ex­cess of US$100 mil­lion. This will rep­re­sent a con­sid­er­able chal­lenge in the next few years," he said.

Har­ris said dur­ing his last year at the cam­pus, he in­tends to ex­pand link­ages with com­mu­ni­ty and col­leges in the "UWI-14" coun­tries."Our fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty at an eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing time for Caribbean gov­ern­ments is a ma­jor chal­lenge," Har­ris said in his let­ter.

T&T does not owe UWIany mon­ey–Howai

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, in an email ex­change on Thurs­day, said T&T was not one of the cam­pus coun­tries ow­ing the UWI."If there is any­thing out­stand­ing, it would be nom­i­nal or would be a re­cent out­stand­ing bal­ance that is the process of set­tle­ment," Howai said.

He could not com­ment on the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of oth­er cam­pus coun­tries, but did say that the 2008 fi­nan­cial down­turn had af­fect­ed the abil­i­ty of cer­tain coun­tries to main­tain their pay­ments.

"I don't have an up to date po­si­tion on each is­land as I was un­able to at­tend the last meet­ing but, as you know, sev­er­al Caribbean is­lands have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fis­cal chal­lenges over the past few years and this would have af­fect­ed their abil­i­ty to meet their com­mit­tents."

Howai did not state which mem­ber coun­tries were in ar­rears. The same query was posed to Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim, who did not com­ment on the is­sue but di­rect­ed all ques­tions re­gard­ing the out­stand­ing mon­ey back to Har­ris."I sug­gest he is best placed to an­swer this," Karim said in a text ex­change on Thurs­day.

UWI cam­pus coun­tries

The UWI has four main cam­pus­es lo­cat­ed in St Au­gus­tine, Trinidad; Cave Hill Bar­ba­dos; Mona in Ja­maica; and the Open Cam­pus with rep­re­sen­ta­tive of­fices and class­rooms in 16 re­gion­al is­lands in­clud­ing An­guil­la, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Ba­hamas, Be­lize, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Cay­man Is­lands, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Montser­rat, St Lu­cia, St Kitts &Nevis, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and in the Turks and Caicos.


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