Kevin Ram­nar­ine

GATE was in­tro­duced in 2004 and its pre­de­ces­sor "Dol­lar for Dol­lar" (DFD) was in­tro­duced in 2001. Both pro­grammes were ini­ti­at­ed when the coun­try was in a pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion dri­ven by the LNG in­dus­try. It was the in­ten­tion of suc­ces­sive Gov­ern­ments that the new en­er­gy div­i­dend be ploughed in­to the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion's hu­man cap­i­tal. No one can dis­agree with that.

As a re­sult T&T be­came one of the few coun­tries in the world that pro­vid­ed its cit­i­zens with free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion at the un­der­grad­u­ate lev­el while post­grad­u­ate de­grees re­ceived on­ly 50 per cent GATE fund­ing. Col­lec­tive­ly GATE and DFD have now been around for 15 years.

An in­crease in the lev­el of en­rol­ment in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion was seen as nec­es­sary to take us to de­vel­oped na­tion sta­tus. Both GATE and DFD, the ex­pan­sion of The UWI, the es­tab­lish­ment of The UTT, the es­tab­lish­ment of COSTAAT and the growth in the pri­vate ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor led to a rev­o­lu­tion in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. By 2013, T&T had at­tained 65 per cent par­tic­i­pa­tion in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion with 67,000 stu­dents ac­cess­ing the GATE pro­gramme.

In 2015, it was re­port­ed that GATE would cost the coun­try about TT$700 mil­lion in fis­cal 2016. Giv­en our re­duced lev­els of rev­enue, it was ex­pect­ed that Gov­ern­ment would want to ex­am­ine the ef­fi­cien­cy of the GATE pro­gramme es­pe­cial­ly since there have been re­ports of waste and abuse re­lat­ed to the pro­gramme.

Last Sun­day, the rec­om­men­da­tions of a Task Force ap­point­ed by Cab­i­net to ex­am­ine the GATE pro­gramme were pub­lished in an­oth­er news­pa­per. The "con­fi­den­tial re­port" was leaked. One of rec­om­men­da­tion pro­posed that un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents pay one third of their tu­ition fees. The rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­port have al­ready cre­at­ed rip­ples in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Stu­dents, par­ents and ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions will be con­cerned and wor­ried. New and con­tin­u­ing stu­dents will be won­der­ing whether come the start of the aca­d­e­m­ic year (just six weeks away) they will be re­quired to find mon­ey to pay fees.

When the GATE sto­ry was pub­lished, I sought to gauge the sen­ti­ment of the pub­lic. I in­vit­ed com­ments on my Face­book page and got 26. Opin­ions were var­ied. Some thought that the rec­om­men­da­tions were a back­ward step. Oth­ers opined that GATE, like the fu­el sub­sidy, had to go. Two peo­ple praised the pro­gramme say­ing that with­out GATE they would not have got their de­grees. Oth­ers lament­ed that the re­moval of GATE would widen the di­vid­ed be­tween the "haves and haves nots."

One con­cern is, should the Task Force's rec­om­men­da­tions be ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 2016, then what hap­pens to stu­dents al­ready en­rolled in de­gree pro­grammes and what about new stu­dents? Both groups would have formed a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that the GATE pro­gramme would have cov­ered all or part (in the case of post­grad­u­ate stu­dents) of their tu­ition fees. The UWI Stu­dent Guild Sec­re­tary Nico­lai Ed­wards has rec­om­mend­ed that any Cab­i­net de­ci­sion should be ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 2017 and stu­dents al­ready en­rolled in a GATE-fund­ed pro­gramme should be able to com­plete their course of study.

The Task Force re­port al­so ad­dress­es post­grad­u­ate de­grees. As I men­tioned be­fore, post­grad­u­ate de­grees on­ly at­tract 50 per cent GATE fund­ing.

The post­grad­u­ate stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er than the un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. The post­grad­u­ate por­tion of GATE will there­fore be con­sid­er­ably small­er than the un­der­grad­u­ate por­tion. Giv­en these fac­tors GATE fund­ing for all post­grad­u­ate de­grees should stay as is. If any­thing, we ought to be en­cour­ag­ing post­grad­u­ate stud­ies es­pe­cial­ly re­search de­grees.

An­oth­er part of the GATE con­ver­sa­tion usu­al­ly says that we ought to fo­cus on "na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties." There are those who be­lieve that GATE should be for en­gi­neer­ing and the sci­ences and ar­eas where we have hu­man re­source de­fi­cien­cies such as nurs­ing. How do we de­ter­mine what is a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty as it re­lates to train­ing re­quire­ments.

I be­lieve that a well-round­ed and en­light­ened so­ci­ety that thinks crit­i­cal­ly needs to have peo­ple schooled in phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, lan­guages, lit­er­a­ture and law. We should think care­ful­ly be­fore we ex­clude from GATE fund­ing de­grees in the hu­man­i­ties and the arts. Lan­guage re­lat­ed de­grees are crit­i­cal to a com­pet­i­tive econ­o­my.

It is now up to the Cab­i­net to ac­cept or re­ject ei­ther par­tial­ly or whol­ly these rec­om­men­da­tions. On the is­sue of GATE, the PNM's 2015 Man­i­festo says, "En­sure that the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) sys­tem, which we cre­at­ed in 2004, re­mains rel­e­vant, eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble and avail­able to all cit­i­zens who need it." Re­as­sur­ances were al­so giv­en in the run up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion that GATE would be main­tained.

The GATE de­bate is good in that it will al­low for a wider dis­cus­sion on the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. Can the sec­tor be made more ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient and if so how? The Gov­ern­ment should pro­ceed with cau­tion and con­sid­er care­ful­ly the rec­om­men­da­tions of this Task Force.

The im­pli­ca­tions of these rec­om­men­da­tions are far reach­ing and im­pact not just 67,000 stu­dents but their fam­i­lies as well. On the oth­er hand, we recog­nise that rev­enue has fall­en and we must cut out waste and in­ef­fi­cien­cy wher­ev­er they ex­ist.

For the record, I am a lec­tur­er at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness. The views con­tained in this col­umn are my per­son­al views.

Kevin Ram­nar­ine is a for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go.