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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Selling The UWI

by

513 days ago
20240209
Dr Varma Deyalsingh

Dr Varma Deyalsingh

Some­times, when a gov­ern­ment fails to sat­is­fy some of the ba­sic needs of its peo­ple, its lead­ers con­ve­nient­ly cre­ate a scape­goat to de­fer blame to sat­is­fy its sup­port base.

Some of our lead­ers laid blame on the ‘re­cal­ci­trant mi­nor­i­ty’, ‘par­a­sitic oli­garchy’, ‘one per cent’, and ‘the op­po­si­tion’ for their in­abil­i­ty to de­liv­er good gov­er­nance.

At present, in Cana­da, there is a hous­ing cri­sis. Two-thirds of renters are giv­ing up on the dream of home own­er­ship. Hous­ing af­ford­abil­i­ty is a chal­lenge for most. The in­creased cost and the time it takes to build homes have proven chal­leng­ing for Justin Trudeau’s gov­ern­ment. Not on­ly is hous­ing ex­pen­sive and scarce but the cost of rent has sky­rock­et­ed.

Cana­da’s PM need­ed to blame some­one. The in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent is the whip­ping boy. Cana­da has now placed a two-year ban on for­eign stu­dents who cre­ate a de­mand for rental prop­er­ties, lead­ing to an in­crease in rental costs for the av­er­age Cana­di­an.

In­di­ans com­prised about 40 per cent of the in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents.

On Sep­tem­ber 21, 2023, Nid­hi Mi­tal, of In­dia TV News, opined, “The re­la­tion­ship be­tween In­dia and Cana­da has crum­bled af­ter the al­le­ga­tions of the Cana­di­an PM against the In­di­an gov­ern­ment in the killing of want­ed Khal­is­tani ter­ror­ist Hard­eep Singh Ni­j­jar…stu­dents may bear the brunt of this de­vel­op­ment.”

Well, Trudeau is teach­ing In­dia a les­son, at the same time de­creas­ing the hous­ing de­mand and giv­ing his sup­port­ers the for­eign stu­dents as the en­e­my.

From Jan­u­ary 1, 2024, most in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents are banned from bring­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers to the UK, in a gov­ern­ment at­tempt to slash mi­gra­tion.

In­di­an stu­dents are forced to go else­where. Aus­tralia and Ger­many are op­tions. But a re­cent protest in Ger­many il­lus­trates ex­trem­ists’ plan to force mil­lions of im­mi­grants to “re-mi­grate”.

Our coun­try’s peace­ful mul­ti-eth­nic co­ex­is­tence can serve as a bea­con to at­tract peo­ple here.

Since 2016, the man­age­ment of The UWI has worked to­wards glob­al com­pet­i­tive rank­ings. In Sep­tem­ber 2021, The UWI stood in the top 1.5 per cent in the Times High­er Ed­u­ca­tion rank­ing sys­tem.

We now need to sell The UWI to the world.

Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Sir Hi­lary Beck­les not­ed, “This is a spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mance, while we have main­tained our num­ber one po­si­tion in the Caribbean, and top 1% of the best in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the surge to the top 1.5% in the world gives us a con­sid­er­able de­gree of pro­fes­sion­al sat­is­fac­tion as a man­age­ment and lead­er­ship team.”

Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor for Strate­gic Plan­ning, Prof Den­sil Williams, not­ed that “the im­pres­sive per­for­mance is root­ed in the work of Fac­ul­ties and Re­search In­sti­tutes. Cam­pus prin­ci­pals and their lead­er­ship teams”.

Our High Com­mis­sion­er to In­dia, His Ex­cel­len­cy Dr Roger Gopaul, needs re­cruit­ment agen­cies to at­tract In­di­an stu­dents with the added in­cen­tive that this is the land of Bri­an Lara.

On June 22, 2023, Guardian Me­dia’s Ke­jan Haynes pub­lished an ar­ti­cle cap­tioned, ‘PM knocks UWI lec­tur­ers’ poor re­search dri­ve’. Dr Row­ley was speak­ing at the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre’s 70th An­niver­sary func­tion, where he was ho­n­oured as the first di­rec­tor born and trained in the Caribbean. The PM said lec­tur­ers were pub­lish­ing more columns in the news­pa­pers than re­search. He said, “I’m a lit­tle im­pa­tient that UWI has fall­en away from its mis­sion in sci­en­tif­ic re­search.”

The in­domitable UWI prin­ci­pal Rose-Marie Belle An­toine re­spond­ed by say­ing, “It seems that UWI needs to pub­li­cise its good work and its great re­search bet­ter. UWI aca­d­e­mics are ac­tive­ly re­search­ing all of those top­ics and more and are ac­knowl­edged in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for their work.

“We have re­search on Sar­gas­sum; we are cre­at­ing green pes­ti­cides, cut­ting edge plas­tic and ma­rine sealants, and prod­ucts ca­pa­ble of build­ing roads in T&T that are sus­tain­able, al­so prod­ucts to counter the prob­lem of re­sis­tance to an­tibi­otics which can save lives.”

In a fol­low-up CNC3 in­ter­view, she spoke on the, “very strong record in terms of sci­en­tif­ic re­search, and what we don’t have, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is the sup­port both from gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor in terms of fund­ing re­search.”

On colum­nist lec­tur­ers, An­toine said, “It’s a bit iron­ic be­cause I have been say­ing to my staff, we need to get our voice out there, quite the op­po­site. We don’t speak out enough, I think, as in­tel­lec­tu­als. You re­mem­ber the days of the Den­nis Pan­tins and the Lloyd Bests and so on, where every is­sue that hap­pened in the so­ci­ety, you had a UWI per­son com­ment­ing, and that is what it should be like.”

All alum­ni need to de­fend The UWI, ap­pre­ci­ate what we have and sup­port its ef­forts.

A day may soon reach when our chil­dren are not wel­come else­where.


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