Raphael John-Lall

A for­mer Di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les who is al­so an econ­o­mist be­lieves that there are num­ber of fac­tors that are re­spon­si­ble for the de­cline in en­rol­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) but one of the main fac­tors is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of in­sti­tu­tions that of­fer uni­ver­si­ty-lev­el cours­es and de­grees.

In the world of busi­ness, ed­u­ca­tion is a prod­uct and ser­vice and if the con­sumer is not hap­py at one in­sti­tu­tion, then there are count­less oth­er op­tions on the mar­ket both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, Gon­za­les said.

Ac­cord­ing to a CNC3 re­port in April, UWI Vice-Chan­cel­lor, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, speak­ing at the AFUWI Awards/Gala in New York City said the uni­ver­si­ty has seen a dip of 2,000 in en­rol­ment across its five cam­pus­es, main­ly dri­ven by pover­ty.

He said there has been a re­duc­tion from 50,000 stu­dents to 48,000 stu­dents.

“This is of con­cern to us. So far, our analy­sis has shown that the pri­ma­ry cause of this is pover­ty, an ex­is­ten­tial threat. Many stu­dents have not been able to com­plete their de­grees. The cam­pus­es have re­port­ed that some stu­dents have had to drop out of their de­gree pro­grammes be­cause they could not af­ford to car­ry on,” Beck­les said.

In a Guardian Me­dia re­port dat­ed May 1, the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing (MTEST) wel­comed a de­ci­sion by UWI to not in­crease tu­ition fees at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

In that me­dia re­lease, the Min­istry said the de­ci­sion was tak­en by the UWI Uni­ver­si­ty Coun­cil dur­ing a meet­ing held on May 8, 2026.

Gon­za­les told the Busi­ness Guardian that ed­u­ca­tion re­mains a high­ly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness.

“I think that UWI stu­dent in­take has been falling due to in­creas­ing com­pe­ti­tion from more ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, the ease of on­line ac­cess to uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion and the in­abil­i­ty of UWI to adapt to labour mar­ket needs. In T&T for in­stance, we have seen the growth of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) and the spread of a num­ber of ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions.”

Speak­ing about pri­vate ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions, he said they of­fer spe­cialised busi­ness de­grees that may have tak­en away from UWI’s tra­di­tion­al de­mo­graph­ic base.

“In the area of busi­ness stud­ies, they would have at­tract­ed stu­dents from UWI and led to a de­cline in that area. Re­mem­ber as well that they en­ter in­to for­mal ties with well recog­nised for­eign uni­ver­si­ties which en­hances the de­gree of their grad­u­ates. But these busi­ness schools just com­pete in a lim­it­ed area. They do not have the labs and equip­ment to com­pete in en­gi­neer­ing, sci­ence, agri­cul­ture and med­i­cine.”

Neg­a­tive im­pact on in­dus­try

Some sec­tors of T&T’s econ­o­my have al­ready seen a neg­a­tive im­pact from UWI’s de­clin­ing en­rol­ment.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T in an ar­ti­cle pub­lished last Sep­tem­ber not­ed that The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies has seen low­er en­rol­ment for en­gi­neer­ing de­grees for both un­der­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate pro­grammes.

Da­ta from the Uni­ver­si­ty’s Sta­tis­ti­cal Di­gests show that from aca­d­e­m­ic year 2015 to 2024, en­rol­ment fell by 38 per­cent. The en­rol­ment of males fell by 34 per­cent while the en­rol­ment of fe­males fell by 44 per­cent.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber al­so stat­ed that this da­ta high­lights two key is­sues in the en­er­gy sec­tor at the mo­ment: the lack of fe­male rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the de­clin­ing num­ber of new en­gi­neers.

“Less grad­u­ate out­put from the Uni­ver­si­ty does cre­ate chal­lenges, how­ev­er, which can have a cycli­cal ef­fect. The de­clin­ing rate of en­gi­neers pro­duced cre­ates a re­al catch-22 sit­u­a­tion in T&T. The de­cline in in­dus­try ac­tiv­i­ty over the years of­ten leads to young en­gi­neers not get­ting jobs right af­ter grad­u­a­tion. This re­sults in stu­dents seek­ing oth­er types of em­ploy­ment and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion­al in­ter­ests. But a chal­lenge faced by the in­dus­try is that when projects do arise, com­pa­nies find it dif­fi­cult to find qual­i­fied en­gi­neers,” the Cham­ber stat­ed.

Pri­vate school growth

The ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor has been trans­formed since the UWI St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus was of­fi­cial­ly opened in 1960.

To­day there are in­sti­tu­tions like the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, SBCS Glob­al Learn­ing In­sti­tute, School of Ac­count­ing and Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) and The Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT) that all of­fer un­der­grad­u­ate and post-grad­u­ate de­grees.

While UWI has ex­pe­ri­enced de­clin­ing num­bers, at least one pri­vate busi­ness school has seen an in­crease in its stu­dent in­take.

Own­er and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of CTS Col­lege Ravi Ra­goonath said his busi­ness has grown over the last few years.

Es­tab­lished in Oc­to­ber 1999, he said CTS Col­lege which is lo­cat­ed in Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas of­fers a wide range of pro­grammes, in­clud­ing preschool, pri­vate pri­ma­ry & sec­ondary school, short cours­es & diplo­mas and un­der­grad­u­ate & post grad­u­ate de­grees.

He spoke about the busi­ness strate­gies that his man­age­ment team has im­ple­ment­ed that have al­lowed the col­lege to grow de­spite the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges as well as those with­in his in­dus­try.

“We piv­ot­ed in the COVID pe­ri­od, mov­ing to on­line pro­grammes, and then that just sud­den­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed the range of cours­es that we were able to of­fer as well as our en­roll­ments. So just to give you an idea, in 2020, when COVID struck, we had about 2,000 stu­dents per year. And then five years lat­er, we upped to 9,000.”

He ex­pects an even big­ger in­take this aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“And this year, we an­tic­i­pate by the end of the year, our num­bers should be around 11,000 stu­dents en­rolled. Not gloat­ing in any way, I’m just giv­ing num­bers as well. We have in­creased our spend­ing on ad­ver­tis­ments.”

Apart from that he said, he has al­so in­creased the depth and the range of cours­es of­fered at the col­lege.

“So, we’ve been in­creas­ing both breadth and depth. For ex­am­ple, we now of­fer from nurs­ery, day­care, preschool, which is from the cra­dle, all the way to bach­e­lors. We’ve al­ready had bach­e­lors and mas­ter’s pro­grammes. We in­tend to start a PhD pro­gramme, but that will come in time.”

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion he pro­vid­ed, the en­roll­ment for cer­tifi­cates makes up more than 60 per cent of over­all en­roll­ment.

“And we have been in­creas­ing the range of cours­es. So apart from the depth, we’ve in­creased in terms of breadth.”

While not giv­ing ex­act num­bers, he said that CTS Col­lege con­tin­ues to of­fer af­ford­able prices com­pared to their com­peti­tors.

“For ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion, I’m hap­py just to shed light on the area that we are speak­ing about. And then our pric­ing, I think our pric­ing strat­e­gy is, we don’t car­ry one of the high­er pric­ings. Our phi­los­o­phy has al­ways been to make ed­u­ca­tion more ac­ces­si­ble.”

Be­cause of the com­pet­i­tive in­dus­try that they are in, he said his school con­tin­ues to car­ry out an ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paign to en­sure that prospec­tive stu­dents know who they are.

“We’ve been can­vass­ing dif­fer­ent schools, go­ing to schools, do­ing a lot more ca­reer fairs, meet­ing with stu­dents and it’s all part of suc­ces­sion plan­ning and grow­ing our num­bers.”

Glob­al trends

Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at UWI Patrick Wat­son told the Busi­ness Guardian that it is not on­ly UWI, but glob­al­ly uni­ver­si­ties are hav­ing chal­lenges in main­tain­ing en­rol­ment lev­els.

“Beck­les said main­ly pover­ty, which I un­der­stood to mean that it was not eas­i­ly with­in the reach of many. This is a world­wide phe­nom­e­non ex­cept per­haps in coun­tries where uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ues to be free or high­ly sub­sidised (like in the Nordic coun­tries).”

He point­ed out that uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion al­so en­tails liv­ing ex­pens­es, cost of books and sta­tionery in ad­di­tion to tu­ition fees, which pose a chal­lenge even in the Nordic coun­tries.

He said that he does not have da­ta but it is like­ly that lo­cal stu­dents are at­tract­ed by these schools that of­fer for­eign de­grees that give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work in for­eign coun­tries.

“I tru­ly don’t know the an­swer to these ques­tions and I cer­tain­ly don’t know that these oth­er in­sti­tu­tions are more ef­fi­cient than the UWI. I do sus­pect, how­ev­er, and with­out any ev­i­dence, that pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions linked to rep­utable for­eign uni­ver­si­ties, like Heri­ott-Watt, may pro­vide ad­e­quate com­pe­ti­tion.”