An­na-Lisa Paul

Stu­dents who have re­ceived fund­ing un­der the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (Gate) pro­gramme and failed to com­plete their course of study may soon be tracked down and asked to re­pay those monies.

This was the word from the di­rec­tor of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's Fund­ing and Grants Ad­min­is­tra­tion De­part­ment, Tere­sa David­son, yes­ter­day, as she not­ed they had re­ceived ap­proval from Cab­i­net for in­creased fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­sources to be in­vest­ed in or­der to re­struc­ture and im­prove the de­part­ment's op­er­a­tions.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the min­istry's St Clair head of­fice, David­son said: "Go­ing for­ward in terms of try­ing to re­cov­er mon­ey, we will have to look at ways to ver­i­fy the stu­dents in the data­base and their sta­tus."

She said the dri­ve could soon be­come a re­al­i­ty, not­ing that pre­vi­ous­ly they were ham­pered by staffing prob­lems. The in­crease in staffing, she said, would now al­low them to in­ves­ti­gate cas­es of stu­dents who had failed to meet their Gate con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions by pass­ing cours­es and ini­ti­ate the fund re­cov­ery process.

David­son said with the pro­posed changes, "we can put some­one to work on it in terms of set­ting pro­ce­dures on how that re­cov­ery can be done.

"With­in our data­base, we may have paid for three years for a stu­dent at­tend­ing UWI but be­cause we may not have col­lect­ed da­ta that this per­son has grad­u­at­ed, we are not sure."

David­son point­ed out that if stu­dents did not meet per­for­mance stan­dards, they were re­quired to re­fund the mon­ey for the pro­gramme."We have been col­lect­ing mon­ey from stu­dents over the years," she ex­plained.

She es­ti­mat­ed that up­wards of $70 mil­lion had so far been col­lect­ed since 2006 and that the amounts col­lect­ed had in­creased year­ly, with close to $14 mil­lion col­lect­ed last year.She said stu­dents con­tin­ued to vis­it the de­part­ment on a dai­ly ba­sis to re­pay monies.

But she added: "That's one of the prob­lems that we have to mon­i­tor right now. We can on­ly mon­i­tor the stu­dents who come back seek­ing Gate. If you come back and try to ac­cess Gate for an­oth­er pro­gramme, then we will not fund you if you can­not show proof that you have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the pre­vi­ous pro­gramme."

"If, how­ev­er, the stu­dents drop out of their pro­grammes and are no longer in the sys­tem, they have no im­me­di­ate way of track­ing them and will now have to re­search the in­di­vid­ual cas­es."

Not­ing that fund­ing was pro­vid­ed to both pub­lic and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions, David­son said the lat­ter were sub­ject­ed to au­dits to en­sure stu­dents met the stip­u­lat­ed re­quire­ments.

"If we find there are stu­dents who did not meet the re­quire­ments, the in­sti­tu­tion is billed and asked to re­fund monies spent," David­son said.She said pri­or to the cur­rent re­struc­tur­ing process­es "Gate was very, very open." She said one on­ly need­ed proof of T&T na­tion­al­i­ty as there was no age lim­it.

But go­ing for­ward she as­sured that stu­dents would not be al­lowed to abuse the pro­gramme, in­clud­ing pur­su­ing more than one course through Gate."At this point in time, stu­dents can­not be in more than one pro­gramme," she added

On an­oth­er is­sue, David­son said the ques­tion of oblig­a­tory ser­vice for suc­cess­ful stu­dents who ac­cessed Gate was al­so some­thing which was still be­ing worked out.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia al­so pro­vid­ed a list of ar­eas in which Gov­ern­ment had made sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to ed­u­ca­tion over the last five years.

These in­clude:

In­fra­struc­ture: $2.7 bil­lion.

Re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture: $10.5 bil­lion.

Gate: $3.2 bil­lion.

HELP loans: $101,836 mil­lion.

Schol­ar­ships: $912 mil­lion.

Law stu­dent ow­ing

One stu­dent, who yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted to still be­ing fi­nan­cial­ly be­hold­en to the Gate pro­gramme, was a first-time law stu­dent.

The 35-year-old woman suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a two-year cer­tifi­cate pro­gramme at the UWI Open Cam­pus more than five years ago, fol­low­ing which she was grant­ed fund­ing to pur­sue a Diplo­ma in Law.

Af­ter fail­ing two ex­ams, the woman was told that she would have to pay $5,000 to re-write the two ex­ams be­fore she was al­lowed to con­tin­ue on in the pro­gramme.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she was ad­vised if she was to pur­sue an­oth­er course of study she would have to re­pay the out­stand­ing sum to the Gov­ern­ment be­fore be­ing al­lowed to ap­ply for fund­ing for oth­er pro­grammes.

The woman, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, ad­mit­ted she was one of the "bad pay" stu­dents who had failed to ho­n­our the re­quire­ment to re­pay the monies.