Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Stu­dents Guild pres­i­dent Vedanand Har­gob­in says thou­sands of stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus are re­lieved that they will not have to pay a 20 per cent in­crease in tu­ition fees come Sep­tem­ber 3.

The de­ci­sion to in­crease the tu­ition fees at the cam­pus by 20 per cent was made in 2023, af­ter ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tion and re­search through a spe­cial fee com­mit­tee com­pris­ing guild-ap­point­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, ac­tu­ar­ies and busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als, UWI said.

The com­mit­tee had rec­om­mend­ed a 25 per cent in­crease, but af­ter fur­ther rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the Guild of Stu­dents, a con­sen­sus was reached on April 20, 2023, that the fee in­crease would be 20 per cent.

The guild al­so asked that the cam­pus not place stu­dents on fi­nan­cial hold if stu­dents had paid 80 per cent of their fees, there­by en­abling them to reg­is­ter and al­low­ing more time to pay the 20 per cent in­crease.

In a press re­lease, the UWI said it had ob­tained per­mis­sion from the in­sti­tu­tion’s Chan­cel­lor to ex­e­cute a stay of the coun­cil’s de­ci­sion on the in­crease for the en­tire aca­d­e­m­ic year 2025-2026.

“The stu­dents are ex­treme­ly hap­py,” Har­gob­in said yes­ter­day.

He said he be­lieves this de­ci­sion was best be­cause a year would give the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion enough time to pre­pare for the change.

“Our is­sue was that it wasn’t com­mu­ni­cat­ed well enough for stu­dents to pre­pare for such, be­cause you know stu­dents have loans and we have a lot of re­gion­al stu­dents as well and they need to be ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared to han­dle that fi­nan­cial bur­den,” he said.

The guild pres­i­dent said he un­der­stood that no stu­dent want­ed to see an in­crease in school fees, but said based on the meet­ings they had with the uni­ver­si­ty’s hi­er­ar­chy (prin­ci­pal and vice chan­cel­lor), the in­sti­tu­tion need­ed to earn more rev­enue.

“The cam­pus needs a lot more mon­ey in or­der to re­main afloat,” he ex­plained.

Har­gob­in, who was elect­ed as pres­i­dent in April, said the guild would use this time to help stu­dents fi­nan­cial­ly, see what bur­saries they could ap­ply for, and al­so see if they were el­i­gi­ble for the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es pro­gramme (GATE).

“Our biggest con­cern was the time to pre­pare for such,” he said.

At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (UTT) of­fi­cial han­dover cer­e­mo­ny for re­new­able en­er­gy sci­ence kits yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad ad­mit­ted that the UWI’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion was dif­fi­cult, but said they had a dis­cus­sion and made the late de­ci­sion to de­fer the fee in­crease.

He said the Gov­ern­ment could not di­rect UWI, but as ma­jor stake­hold­ers/part­ners, they were try­ing to build on co­op­er­a­tion.

“I think all’s well that ends well, so it’s been de­ferred,” he said.