Akash Sama­roo

Cur­rent and in­com­ing stu­dents of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus are elat­ed and re­lieved that there will be no in­crease to tu­ition fees for the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year 2022/2023.

On Wednes­day, af­ter months of un­cer­tain­ty, the cam­pus an­nounced that “Chan­cel­lor Robert Bermudez has ap­proved a re­quest from the cam­pus to re­tain cur­rent tu­ition fees for the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year.”

The cam­pus added that this would now ease the minds of prospec­tive stu­dents who were un­sure if they would be able to af­ford any in­crease in fees.

UWI man­age­ment had rec­om­mend­ed the fee in­crease ear­li­er this year, but it was not sup­port­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

In a me­dia re­lease, UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Bri­an Copeland sought to en­cour­age those stu­dents, say­ing, “Join­ing the UWI St Au­gus­tine fam­i­ly rep­re­sents the best val­ue for mon­ey, giv­en the fact that its fees are among the low­est and that its de­grees are ac­cept­ed and recog­nised glob­al­ly.”

Guardian Me­dia was able to ob­tain from UWI, a com­par­a­tive tu­ition fee sheet that showed that fees per cred­it at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus were sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er com­pared to the Cave Hill (Bar­ba­dos) and Mona (Ja­maica) Cam­pus­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to En­gi­neer­ing and Law.

Copeland al­so added in the me­dia re­lease that “cit­i­zens who ques­tion the val­ue of a uni­ver­si­ty de­gree in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate, should come to terms with the fact that a uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion is a life­long in­vest­ment.”

Pres­i­dent of the UWI St Au­gus­tine Guild of Stu­dents, Kobe Sandy, said the guild has been adamant and strong in its op­po­si­tion to the way the in­crease to the fees were be­ing pro­posed.

“It would have been dis­ad­van­ta­geous to the stu­dents be­cause of the un­cer­tain­ty of GATE, the sharp­ness of the pro­posed in­crease and, of course, the lack of con­sul­ta­tion and pre­pared­ness for the stu­dent body,” Sandy said.

Sandy said they are hap­py the UWI would have lis­tened and ad­hered to their ad­vo­ca­cy on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, he said the guild is not to­tal­ly in op­po­si­tion to an in­crease in the fu­ture.

“The guild sup­ports an in­cre­men­tal in­crease of fees; we sup­port fur­ther­ing the con­ver­sa­tion with the stu­dent body go­ing for­ward on what is ex­pect­ed of us in the next few years to come to im­prove the state of the UWI and we wish for there to be an­oth­er im­pact analy­sis on how tu­ition fees im­pact the stu­dent body and how we can make var­i­ous ac­com­mo­da­tions to en­sure that the stu­dents do not feel the full im­pact if in fact there is an in­crease in the fu­ture.”

Mean­while, Copeland, in the same me­dia re­lease, an­nounced that af­ter more than two years of re­mote teach­ing and learn­ing, the cam­pus will re­turn to face-to-face op­er­a­tions from Sep­tem­ber 2022, in time for the start of the 2022/2023 aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“Stu­dents will have full ac­cess to con­duct labs, vis­it the Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary and con­sult with lec­tur­ers. Halls of Res­i­dence will re­sume op­er­a­tions and will wel­come stu­dents to the Joyce Gib­son-In­niss Hall, Sir Arthur Lewis and Cana­da Halls,” he said.