Gail Alexan­der

Check your­self first.

Gov­ern­ment isn’t sup­port­ing a pro­pos­al for in­creased tu­ition fees for this aca­d­e­m­ic year (2022-23) made by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus—and has asked UWI to ex­am­ine its 300 cours­es and see if it hasn’t overex­tend­ed it­self.

“We feel in­creas­es should be a last re­sort,” Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert added on the is­sue at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

While the fee hike is out for the cur­rent year, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said Gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er all in­for­ma­tion to be sub­mit­ted by UWI and then come to a con­clu­sion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UWI’s Stu­dent Guild with re­spect to the years fol­low­ing 2022-23.

And the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme is al­so un­der dis­cus­sion by Gov­ern­ment.

Im­bert and Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed Gov­ern­ment fund­ing UWI to the tune of $500 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, plus $200 mil­lion for GATE; and $150 mil­lion for bur­saries and schol­ar­ships.

The mat­ter of in­creased fees was raised by the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus prin­ci­pal on March 5.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the hike pro­posed for 2022-23 was for Gov­ern­ment to cov­er 80 per cent of tu­ition costs through its di­rect con­tri­bu­tion to UWI, and stu­dents cov­er 20 per cent.

Gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly cov­ers 82 per cent of tu­ition costs and stu­dents 13 per cent.

Im­bert not­ed that over the last three years, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica have cut back on the amounts they have avail­able to spend on their cam­pus­es but T&T’s faced with the chal­lenge of St Au­gus­tine con­tin­u­ing to seek large sums.

Due to COVID and fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, St Au­gus­tine was lim­it­ed to a par­tic­u­lar sum in the bud­get, he added.

“What we’ve found is the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus has found it dif­fi­cult to live with­in the Bud­get we’ve giv­en them.”

One is­sue is UWI’s size– over 16,000 stu­dents. GATE al­so con­tributed to that, he said.

T&T, Im­bert not­ed, reached the GATE tar­get of 60 per cent for en­rol­ment in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in 2009. But the uni­ver­si­ty kept grow­ing and en­rol­ment is far more than it used to be. How­ev­er, Im­bert said T&T is in dif­fer­ent times and had to lim­it the amount for UWI and the amount T&T can af­ford to spend on GATE. He said UWI’s re­ac­tion to that was to pro­pose in­creased tu­ition fees.

He added: “They felt that was the so­lu­tion. We have a dif­fer­ent view. We dis­cov­ered UWI St Au­gus­tine has over 300 dif­fer­ent course of­fer­ings and 16,000-17,000 stu­dents. We’re of the view UWI needs to look at the cours­es they want the Gov­ern­ment and coun­try to pay for.

Minister of Education Nyan Gadsby-Dolly addresses the media during yesterday’s post-Cabinet briefing at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.

OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

“We’re not go­ing to tell them what cours­es to put on but we be­lieve they need to look at all these cours­es they’re of­fer­ing and de­cide what the Gov­ern­ment should pay. UWI needs to look with­in first and see if they haven’t overex­tend­ed them­selves.”

He added, “Be­cause the cost to the state is di­rect­ly pro­por­tion­al to the num­ber of stu­dents and num­ber of cours­es of­fered: the more stu­dents you have and more cours­es of­fered, the high­er your costs rise.”

Im­bert said a min­is­te­r­i­al team, com­pris­ing him­self, Kei­th Scot­land and Gads­by-Dol­ly, looked at UWI’s pro­pos­al and met UWI’s out­go­ing prin­ci­pal Bri­an Copeland and in­com­ing prin­ci­pal Rose­marie Belle An­toine, who made the pro­pos­als.

“And our po­si­tion to them is they need to take a look at the size of their en­rol­ment and num­ber of course of­fer­ings to see whether that’s the rea­son why their costs are so high.”

UWI was asked to ex­am­ine a ten per cent re­duc­tion from Gov­ern­ment’s $500 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said the main rea­son UWI re­quest­ed a fee in­crease was due to a re­duc­tion of gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion by ten per cent this year and St Au­gus­tine fees–low­est re­gion­al­ly– haven’t in­creased for 21 years.

Fol­low­ing the March 5 meet­ing, the min­istry met on April 28 with St Au­gus­tine cam­pus ex­ec­u­tive and the Stu­dents Guild pres­i­dent to dis­cuss the pro­pos­al.

The guild had con­cerns, in­clud­ing in­suf­fi­cient con­sul­ta­tion, in­creas­es be­ing too sharp and query on whether in­creased fees could be cov­ered by GATE. The guild al­so rec­om­mend­ed fee in­crease be con­tem­plat­ed for the next aca­d­e­m­ic year—2023/24—and dur­ing the cur­rent year, all par­ties do fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion with the guild on im­pact analy­sis and based on all that in­for­ma­tion–sim­i­lar to what Fi­nance sug­gest­ed - the fee in­crease be done based on that in­for­ma­tion for the next aca­d­e­m­ic year.

She said on May 9, the Prime Min­is­ter ap­point­ed the min­is­te­r­i­al team to meet the cam­pus ex­ec­u­tive and guild. Their May 13 meet­ing ex­am­ined if Gov­ern­ment would sup­port a fee hike for the 2022-23 year, if that would be cov­ered by GATE and if Gov­ern­ment can af­ford in­creas­ing UWI’s sub­ven­tion. Ma­jor con­sid­er­a­tion was the im­pact of a fee in­crease.

“It would have meant come Sep­tem­ber 2022, stu­dents would have been asked to pay more for en­rol­ment and fee in­creas­es pro­posed ranged from 25 per cent to 71 per cent de­pend­ing on the fac­ul­ty,” she said.

The team, how­ev­er, sug­gest­ed St Au­gus­tine do an in-depth cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis and course ef­fi­ca­cy analy­sis, ex­am­in­ing all cours­es, en­rol­ment and how we can re­duce where it’s pos­si­ble.

Im­bert said the ball is back in UWI’s court on what pro­gramme to pos­si­bly cut and Gov­ern­ment wasn’t dic­tat­ing on this or be­ing in­tru­sive.

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