Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/ Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad Youth Coun­cil (TYC) is now call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­pand the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme, fol­low­ing the abrupt sus­pen­sion of ap­pli­ca­tions for for­eign stu­dent visas by the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion made the an­nounce­ment on Tues­day evening, send­ing lo­cal stu­dents who may be seek­ing to ac­quire stu­dent visas in the Unit­ed States in­to a tail­spin.

A di­rec­tive, signed by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and sent to all US diplo­mat­ic and con­sular posts abroad stat­ed, “Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, in prepa­ra­tion for an ex­pan­sion of re­quired so­cial me­dia screen­ing and vet­ting, con­sular sec­tions should not add any ad­di­tion­al stu­dent or ex­change vis­i­tor (F, M, and J) visa ap­point­ment ca­pac­i­ty un­til fur­ther guid­ance is is­sued, which we an­tic­i­pate in the com­ing days.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs said he was com­mit­ted to ob­tain­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion from US au­thor­i­ties on the mat­ter.

“We def­i­nite­ly want to as­sure the pub­lic that this is a pri­or­i­ty to pro­cure as much in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject mat­ter as pos­si­ble,” Sobers told Guardian Me­dia.

Fur­ther ques­tions on when di­a­logue with US of­fi­cials will hap­pen were not an­swered.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, TYC pres­i­dent Shane John said the sit­u­a­tion now puts the onus on the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn the GATE pro­gramme to its orig­i­nal for­mat.

“Dur­ing the cam­paign, you saw the (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion speak about the ex­pan­sion of GATE and re­turn­ing GATE to its usu­al glo­ry when it was first in­tro­duced by then- prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Ap­pli­ca­tions for uni­ver­si­ties are go­ing on now. So, I would hope, and young per­sons would hope, that with­in this time pe­ri­od, be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic term in Sep­tem­ber starts, that there is that col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort and that con­sci­en­tious ef­fort to ex­pand it,” John said.

He said the lat­est US di­rec­tive should al­so not come as a shock giv­en re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the US. He said if ad­dressed prop­er­ly, the sit­u­a­tion can al­so now be used to mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress the is­sue of “brain drain.”

“The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, UTT (Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go), and even those for­eign (af­fil­i­at­ed) uni­ver­si­ties like SAM (School of Ac­count­ing and Man­age­ment) and ILAS (In­sti­tute of Law and Aca­d­e­m­ic Stud­ies), they would now have to adapt and look at what Trinidad and To­ba­go is miss­ing in terms of what is not be­ing of­fered in Trinidad,” John said.

He added, “The Prime Min­is­ter spoke about AI (ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence). How is that go­ing to re­flect on our cur­ricu­lums at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and UTT and how would that be in­te­grat­ed with­in the sys­tem. I think it will take a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach in terms of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions and how best we will meet oth­er gov­ern­ments to see what they can pro­vide for us.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad said this was al­so a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for both lo­cal ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions and stu­dents in T&T.

Min­is­ter Per­sad said, “Prospec­tive stu­dents need to be mind­ful of and con­form to the laws of the coun­try in which they want to study. Stu­dents may wish to con­sid­er or re­con­sid­er study­ing at our ex­cel­lent ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions. This new sit­u­a­tion pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to our uni­ver­si­ties to seize up­on.”

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) be­lieves this new de­vel­op­ment is deeply con­cern­ing, with the po­ten­tial for far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for stu­dents lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia, “It brings in­to ques­tion what is the ra­tio­nale for such ac­tion; what would have caused the US ad­min­is­tra­tion to con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing more strin­gent vet­ting pro­ce­dures for in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents. This tem­po­rary hold will cer­tain­ly de­lay in plans for stu­dents seek­ing en­rol­ment for stud­ies in sum­mer and fall 2025.”

The di­rec­tive from Ru­bio did not ex­plain what the fu­ture so­cial me­dia vet­ting would screen for. But it comes at a time when the US ad­min­is­tra­tion is crack­ing down on bat­tling an­ti­semitism and keep­ing out sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists.

But Stew­art al­so sees a sil­ver lin­ing.

“This may al­so be an op­por­tune time in the Caribbean re­gion in par­tic­u­lar to look at more ro­bust aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grams/stud­ies to at­tract and re­tain, re­gion­al and even in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents to pur­sue ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in our uni­ver­si­ties in the re­gion.”

About Gate

The GATE pro­gramme was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2004 un­der the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to as­sist cit­i­zens with tu­ition costs for ap­proved pro­grammes at ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions.

Ini­tial­ly, it of­fered up to 100% un­der­grad­u­ate tu­ition and 50% post­grad­u­ate tu­ition fees.

The pro­gramme was ex­pand­ed in 2011 to in­clude fund­ing for stu­dents in Tech­ni­cal Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing (TVET) pro­grammes.

By 2015, the pro­gramme’s an­nu­al cost was re­port­ed to be around TT$700 mil­lion.

In No­vem­ber 2020, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion an­nounced sig­nif­i­cant changes due to bud­getary con­straints. These in­clud­ed: the rein­tro­duc­tion of a means test, tiered fund­ing based on house­hold in­come, fund­ing for one un­der­grad­u­ate pro­gramme on­ly, and the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of post-grad­u­ate fund­ing.

In 2024, the pro­gramme was ad­just­ed to cov­er the full tu­ition cost of med­ical stud­ies (MBBS) for stu­dents at UWI cam­pus­es in Mona, Ja­maica, and Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos.