The 550 stu­dents sched­uled to grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean (USC) in No­vem­ber are ap­peal­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, to in­ter­vene in what they have de­scribed as a stand-off with cam­pus of­fi­cials over the ex­or­bi­tant fees they are be­ing forced to pay to se­cure their diplo­mas.

The an­gry stu­dents have ac­cused the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tors of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment and claimed they are now be­ing made to foot the bill for un­nec­es­sary ex­pens­es which they can ill-af­ford at this time.

The stu­dents were orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to grad­u­ate in June and re­ceive their cer­tifi­cates by Ju­ly 31.

How­ev­er, af­ter the tra­di­tion­al cer­e­mo­ny was post­poned due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the school in­formed stu­dents that a vir­tu­al grad­u­a­tion would be held in No­vem­ber at a cost of $750 per stu­dent.

Ques­tion­ing what ex­act­ly they were be­ing charged for as it is a vir­tu­al cer­e­mo­ny, the stu­dents said they be­came up­set af­ter their con­cerns were dis­missed by the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tors.

One stu­dent said, “The sit­u­a­tion wors­ened when we were told that even if we did not at­tend the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, we had to pay the full amount in or­der to get our cer­tifi­cates.”

He de­scribed this ul­ti­ma­tum as, “un­fair and un­just.”

A fel­low grad­u­ate fur­ther ex­plained: “It is hard right now for plen­ty of us to find that mon­ey to pay ad­di­tion­al. Some of us come from sin­gle par­ent homes…plus there are oth­ers who have suf­fered dur­ing this pan­dem­ic…where their par­ents and guardians have lost their jobs and we have reached the end of our stud­ies on­ly to be told that our cer­tifi­cates are be­ing held to ran­som. How could this be right?”

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing with USC Pres­i­dent Dr Hi­lary Bow­man last week, the stu­dents were pro­vid­ed with a break­down of the $750 fee which in­cludes $202.50 to print the cer­tifi­cate; $202.50 to print the diplo­ma jack­et; $180 for video pro­duc­tion and live stream­ing; $142.50 for stage, sound and light­ing; and $22.50 for ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es.

Claim­ing the cam­pus po­si­tion was op­pres­sive; a third stu­dent said the fi­nan­cial ex­ploita­tion of the stu­dents un­der the guise of a grad­u­a­tion was not in keep­ing with the in­sti­tu­tion’s re­li­gious teach­ings and found­ing prin­ci­ples.

He added: “The stu­dents are will­ing to pay no more than $400 to col­lect their cer­tifi­cates. This would cov­er the cost of print­ing the cer­tifi­cates and al­so to pre­pare the jack­ets for them to be placed in.”

“We should not be made to pay for a venue when it will be held in the cam­pus au­di­to­ri­um, nor light­ing and dec­o­rat­ing as it will be a vir­tu­al cer­e­mo­ny for those who choose to be part of it…as it will on­ly be sin­gle space that will be need­ed.”

He end­ed: “This is wrong and we are call­ing on the pow­ers that be to help us….none of us can af­ford this ad­di­tion­al ex­pense right now, but we need our cer­tifi­cates to get on with on our lives. We have paid all the fees that were re­quired of us from year to year with­out com­plaint but this can­not con­tin­ue now.”

USC’s Co-or­di­na­tor, In­te­grat­ed Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Josh Rud­der on Tues­day re­spond­ed to ques­tions from the Trinidad Guardian via email.

He de­scribed as re­gret­table, the con­tin­ued dis­sat­is­fac­tion of some mem­bers of the 2020 grad­u­a­tion class de­spite the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s at­tempt to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the grad­u­a­tion fees by 41 per cent.

Fol­low­ing Bow­man’s meet­ing with the stu­dent body last week, Rud­der said a de­ci­sion had been tak­en to re­duce the grad­u­a­tion fee from $750 to $650.

He re­vealed that the an­nu­al grad­u­a­tion fee had been re­duced from $1,100 to $650.

Rud­der claimed this was done as the uni­ver­si­ty had moved to sub­si­dize, “the cost giv­en the eco­nom­ic con­straints caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

Due to host the vir­tu­al grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies on No­vem­ber 14 and 15, Rud­der said it would com­prise all as­pects of the usu­al pomp and cer­e­mo­ny that USC is known for.

Con­firm­ing she was aware of the mat­ter, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said while there would be spe­cif­ic costs and fees as­so­ci­at­ed with any grad­u­a­tion ex­er­cise at any lev­el – this was some­thing that had to be de­ter­mined by the re­spec­tive in­sti­tu­tion.

She said: “This ap­pears to be a larg­er is­sue of the stu­dents maybe not want­i­ng to at­tend the grad­u­a­tion, as they seem to want to col­lect the cer­tifi­cate on­ly.”

“That is an op­tion in most cas­es that stu­dents can avail them­selves of and it usu­al­ly comes at a re­duced cost.”

Pressed to say if she planned to meet with the stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Gads­by-Dol­ly urged uni­ver­si­ty of­fi­cials and the stu­dents to di­a­logue fur­ther to ar­rive at an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion.

Mean­while, se­nior of­fi­cials at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus; and the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and the Ap­plied Arts of T&T (COSTAATT)—both con­firmed their grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies were be­ing planned for Jan­u­ary 2021.

Un­able to say ex­act­ly what form UWI’s grad­u­a­tion would take, Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland ex­plained, “It will be a hy­brid type of cer­e­mo­ny.”

Re­veal­ing that such de­tails in­clud­ing the cost would be con­firmed in the com­ing weeks, he went on, “It will be same across all cam­pus­es in the re­gion.”

COSTAATT Pres­i­dent Dr Gillian Paul said many of their stu­dents had been se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and had led to some per­sons hav­ing to sus­pend/de­fer class­es.

In­di­cat­ing the com­pas­sion­ate and hu­mane ap­proach they had adopt­ed to­wards their stu­dents, Paul said, “If we are not go­ing to be host­ing it any­where, we would not re­al­ly be charg­ing stu­dents for those types of things that would re­al­ly be for the venue, cer­e­mo­ny and mu­sic as such.”

She said the on­ly costs their stu­dents would en­counter are those at­tached to rent­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al gown; the grad­u­a­tion ring if they wish to pur­chase it; and the cost of print­ing the cer­tifi­cate.

Paul said: “They would get to choose what they can af­ford in terms of ex­pens­es as we will not be do­ing a one-size-fits-all. We have stu­dents across all fi­nan­cial spec­trum and we do not want to place them un­der any un­nec­es­sary bur­den at this time.”

A pe­ti­tion call­ing for an im­me­di­ate re­duc­tion in fees was re­cent­ly sub­mit­ted to the COSTAATT Board for con­sid­er­a­tion, af­ter many of the stu­dents re­port­ed the neg­a­tive im­pact of the pan­dem­ic which had led to some los­ing their jobs, whilst oth­ers claimed to have re­duced hours of work and a loss of in­come.

On Thurs­day, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) re­vealed that it had post­poned the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies sched­uled to take place in No­vem­ber un­til a phys­i­cal cer­e­mo­ny could take place, say­ing grad­uands pre­ferred to have a face-to-face cer­e­mo­ny.