Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions strug­gle with grow­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges and rapid ad­vances in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, says an over­haul of the sys­tem and deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion are nec­es­sary for sur­vival.

May will mark one year since he was sworn in as a min­is­ter and his re­turn to front­line pol­i­tics af­ter three decades. A found­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress mem­ber in 1989, Per­sad lat­er served as an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor un­der the late Bas­deo Pan­day be­fore re­turn­ing to acad­e­mia at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

While ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in this coun­try has be­come eas­i­er and more af­ford­able over the last two decades, the in­sti­tu­tions de­liv­er­ing it face sev­er­al chal­lenges. Per­sad sat down with me on The Big In­ter­view pro­gramme to dis­cuss such mat­ters last week. The in­ter­view will air on CNC3 in the com­ing weeks.

Per­sad is spear­head­ing the re­vival of a min­istry that was pre­vi­ous­ly led by the late ed­u­ca­tor Fazal Karim. In the 2010 Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Cab­i­net, it was called the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion.

The ed­u­ca­tion

sub­sidy dilem­ma

From Pan­day’s dol­lar-for-dol­lar pro­gramme to Patrick Man­ning’s Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme, cit­i­zens have been able to eas­i­ly en­rol in high­er-ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes over the last three decades. Through the rise and fall of oil and gas prices, the State has sub­sidised such ven­tures. How­ev­er, the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty of the coun­try is quick­ly catch­ing up to the high­er-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions.

Up­on as­sum­ing the role of Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Per­sad sum­moned all of the gov­ern­ment-fund­ed ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions to a meet­ing. Each was asked to sub­mit a re­port with­in three months. One of the fac­tors they need­ed to look at in­clud­ed how uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges could be­come more sus­tain­able.

“We asked that in the first year, they can re­duce the ex­pen­di­ture by about five per cent and al­so earn some mon­ey, be­cause when you look at uni­ver­si­ties, there’s a huge amount of in­fra­struc­ture there: labs, staff who are quite com­pe­tent, et cetera, and sim­ple things like the build­ings can be rent­ed out.”

With a mul­ti­tude of aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions at the dis­pos­al of those seek­ing high­er ed­u­ca­tion, Per­sad be­lieves there is a greater need for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween them. He la­belled it his biggest chal­lenge, say­ing, “I think the biggest chal­lenge is in Trinidad. We have this sort of si­lo men­tal­i­ty, so that’s why I asked all in­sti­tu­tions to come to­geth­er. There’s a de­gree of over­lap, of du­pli­ca­tion, so we’re try­ing to re­duce du­pli­ca­tion and har­monise the of­fer­ings. For in­stance, what UTT is of­fer­ing, MIC should not of­fer, or NESC, so we re­duce the du­pli­ca­tion, so it be­comes more ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient that way.”

From schol­ar­ships

to job se­cu­ri­ty

How­ev­er, one of the en­dur­ing prob­lems these lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions face is the num­ber of sec­ondary school stu­dents opt­ing for uni­ver­si­ties abroad or vy­ing for schol­ar­ships. While Per­sad is not against such goals, he said the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor in T&T now al­lows for stu­dents to ac­cess a high­er lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion at home.

He ex­plained, “I think the coun­try must re­view what is hap­pen­ing. Way back when schol­ar­ships came in, there were no re­al uni­ver­si­ties in the coun­try, so to get ad­vanced train­ing, you went abroad. The ques­tion the coun­try must ask it­self now is, why are we send­ing our bright­est abroad? Who’s ben­e­fit­ing from it? This is some­thing we need to re­view, to look at, and I think this is some­thing the so­ci­ety it­self should be able to give an an­swer to be­fore we go for­ward.”

How­ev­er, crit­ics have ar­gued that even if stu­dents study at lo­cal uni­ver­si­ties, the job mar­ket can­not ab­sorb all of them up­on grad­u­a­tion.

Per­sad ad­mit­ted this is a glob­al dilem­ma, and lo­cal­ly, it is some­thing that re­quires ur­gent at­ten­tion. For ex­am­ple, the num­ber of doc­tors, lawyers, and en­gi­neers grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try far ex­ceeds the num­ber that the job mar­ket can ab­sorb.

Per­sad stat­ed, “We need to look at it here. If you look at oth­er places, the pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies de­ter­mine how many peo­ple should go in­to a par­tic­u­lar field. Here, there is no such lim­it. So, if there’s a de­mand, peo­ple want to do en­gi­neer­ing, for in­stance, or med­i­cine, and they go and do it, but there’s no lim­it.

“I think it’s up to the uni­ver­si­ty to say, ‘Hey, this is the sort of num­ber,’ be­cause they ought to be talk­ing to the Med­ical Coun­cil, et cetera. We had meet­ings with the Min­istry of Health, and there are right now about 600 doc­tors who are wait­ing for jobs. The health sec­tor can’t ac­com­mo­date this amount, so I think we need to have bet­ter mech­a­nisms in place at the uni­ver­si­ty lev­el, and uni­ver­si­ties must play the role in that—that this is the num­ber we’re go­ing to take in con­sul­ta­tion with the ap­pro­pri­ate bod­ies.”

The pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in­sists there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for those in the di­as­po­ra to con­tribute to T&T’s de­vel­op­ment, and it is some­thing the coun­try must se­ri­ous­ly look at. He ex­plained, “You’re go­ing to lose these peo­ple, but if you put mech­a­nisms in place, maybe you can get back some of them to con­tribute to the coun­try, and in fact, the Min­is­ter of Health, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, has looked at that. We can get the di­as­po­ra doc­tors to come down and help a bit.”

Ex­pan­sion of GATE, bur­saries

The min­is­ter is al­so plan­ning to ex­pand GATE and oth­er bur­saries. Per­sad ex­plained, “That is some­thing I am in the process of writ­ing a note to Cab­i­net on. I’m look­ing at schol­ar­ships, bur­saries, GATE, and al­so, we’re look­ing at why all these schol­ar­ships and bur­saries should be for A-lev­els or CAPE? We need to de­fo­cus a bit on that. Look at the oth­er as­pects, like tech­ni­cian train­ing and some low­er ones al­so. Then some post­grad­u­ate train­ing, be­cause there’s a short­age of spe­cial­ist doc­tors in this coun­try al­so, and spe­cial­ist en­gi­neers and a va­ri­ety of fields like that.”

He said the ex­pan­sion will not be fi­nan­cial but rather give ac­cess to a wider cross-sec­tion of stu­dents.

Per­sad al­so con­firmed that the Debe cam­pus is on track to open in Sep­tem­ber, but he stopped short of say­ing whether it will be ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to law, not­ing that the de­ci­sion rests with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Re­gard­less of the de­ci­sion, he is adamant that South Trinidad must have the con­ve­nience of ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions in its back­yard as well, ref­er­enc­ing a map where most of the high­er ed­u­ca­tion uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges are north-cen­tric.

Af­ter 45 years in acad­e­mia, Per­sad hopes to trans­form the coun­try’s ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor to meet the needs of the 21st cen­tu­ry, even as he smiles when asked how to­day’s pol­i­tics dif­fer from his time in the Sen­ate in the late 1980s. His mis­sion, both po­lit­i­cal­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, he said, has al­ways been the same: to ad­vance the coun­try’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to reach stu­dents where they are.