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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Credit facilities can ease Gate bitter pill

by

20160816

The Cab­i­net's de­ci­sion to make cer­tain cut­backs to its fund­ing of the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (Gate) pro­gramme has pro­voked sig­nif­i­cant dis­com­fort among cer­tain cit­i­zens. Per­haps the re­cip­i­ent of the most crit­i­cism is the new pol­i­cy po­si­tion to no longer ex­tend Gate to cit­i­zens over the age of 50.

Con­dem­na­tion has been forth­com­ing from the op­po­si­tion UNC, an­ti-ageism as­so­ci­a­tions, me­dia hous­es, the Catholic Re­li­gious Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tute and even con­tro­ver­sial­ly from the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion. The thrust of all these ar­gu­ments are that re­strict­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion fund­ing by age is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

How­ev­er, be­fore we write off the Gov­ern­ment's new pol­i­cy we must as­sess whether such a po­si­tion aligns with the ob­jec­tives of State-spon­sored ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­text.

When­ev­er a dis­cus­sion on Gate takes place cit­i­zens must re­main mind­ful of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis which now con­fronts the na­tion. Ac­count­ing for over $700 mil­lion in the 2015-2016 fis­cal year, Gate was in­tro­duced in 2004 by the Man­ning Ad­min­is­tra­tion as one in­stru­ment of the then gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy of free ed­u­ca­tion–free ed­u­ca­tion "from ABC to PhD."

How­ev­er, such an am­bi­tious pro­gramme took flight at a time when pe­tro­le­um rev­enue was at a high and con­tin­ued to climb even high­er over the next eight years. This is no longer the case. The na­tion­al rev­enue flows have dwin­dled over 50 per cent and many ex­perts con­tend that we have not yet seen the bot­tom. Gate, the URP and Cepep to­geth­er with oth­er trans­fers and sub­si­dies such as the fu­el sub­sidy and food cards amount to al­most or even more than half of the na­tion­al bud­get.

These pro­grammes, while ex­treme­ly pop­u­lar among the mass­es as a route to so­cial mo­bil­i­ty in the case of Gate, in re­al­i­ty do lit­tle to boost the rev­enue gen­er­a­tion of the State and are of­ten­times shame­less­ly abused by the cit­i­zen­ry. In a time of eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion where rev­enue streams are dry­ing up the Gov­ern­ment, what­ev­er the math­e­mat­i­cal com­po­si­tion of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, sim­ply can­not af­ford to fund an un­fet­tered Gate pro­gramme. This means that there must be some draw­downs on who is el­i­gi­ble to qual­i­fy for fund­ing and the ex­tent of that fund­ing. At the same time it must be borne in mind that any cut­backs will be la­beled as dis­crim­i­na­to­ry by those af­fect­ed, how­ev­er, it is up to the cit­i­zen­ry as a col­lec­tive to de­ter­mine if in prin­ci­ple the cuts are rea­son­able in all the cir­cum­stances.

The over­ar­ch­ing ob­jec­tive be­hind Gate was to en­sure that no cit­i­zen is de­nied ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion be­cause of an in­abil­i­ty to pay. This can­not, even by a stretch, be in­ter­pret­ed as sig­ni­fy­ing that the State should pay for every for­ay in­to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion by any cit­i­zen.

It was in­tend­ed that through Gate cit­i­zens be af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be free to ac­cess ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion for the first time. It al­lowed for 100 per cent State-fund­ed first de­grees. The bot­tom line was to ob­tain a ter­tiary qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Now for 12 years peo­ple over age 50 have had this pro­gramme avail­able to them and many have al­ready ac­cessed the fund­ing for de­grees al­ready in their pos­ses­sion.

Checks at the uni­ver­si­ties will re­veal that the ma­jor­i­ty of ma­ture en­trants over age 50 are al­ready in pos­ses­sion of ter­tiary qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Fur­ther stud­ies at this point is large­ly for ca­reer ad­vance­ment and the Gov­ern­ment should not in all good con­science be re­quired to fund that as well. Such cit­i­zens will al­so be in a bet­ter fi­nan­cial po­si­tion than peo­ple of less­er age and hence more ca­pa­ble of fund­ing ter­tiary stud­ies.

Sim­i­lar­ly, no cit­i­zen has a right to free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. While cit­i­zens do have a con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee of equal­i­ty of treat­ment be­fore any pub­lic au­thor­i­ty un­der sec­tion 4(d) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, that right is not ab­solute. Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is al­lowed so long as it pur­sues a le­git­i­mate ob­jec­tive. Fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion is a le­git­i­mate goal when one con­sid­ers that the ob­jec­tive of Gate was a means to­wards be­ing qual­i­fied so as to ac­cess the job mar­ket.

While the de­ci­sion to give peo­ple over 50 the axe have quite pre­dictably pro­voked the ire of that con­stituen­cy of cit­i­zens we must re­main mind­ful of the over­ar­ch­ing prin­ci­ple be­hind Gate to al­low ease of ac­cess to first-time ter­tiary stud­ies and the eco­nom­ic con­straints in which our na­tion finds it­self.

So as to make this bit­ter med­i­cine more palat­able the Gov­ern­ment should make cred­it fa­cil­i­ties more eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to peo­ple over 50 for ed­u­ca­tion pur­pos­es as well as work with the ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions them­selves to of­fer more at­trac­tive rates to ma­ture en­trants. At the same time steps should be tak­en to en­sure that the Gate pro­gramme is ac­ces­si­ble on­ly to cit­i­zens for it will be patent­ly un­fair to ex­clude a wide group of cit­i­zens while al­low­ing non-na­tion­als to ben­e­fit from cit­i­zen-fund­ed tu­ition.

All in all we must re­alise that the Gov­ern­ment sure­ly isn't tak­ing com­fort in such bit­ing ad­just­ments but it should high­light for us the grav­i­ty of our eco­nom­ic con­di­tion.

Vaughn M Thomas

Sam­bra­no Street, Biche


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