Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem cer­tain­ly seems to be tak­ing a beat­ing in re­cent times.

Fresh on the heels of Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly’s an­nounce­ment of a 300-al­lot­ment cut in the Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ships Pro­gramme and the im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion of GATE fund­ing for post­grad­u­ate stu­dents, came the an­nounce­ment by Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T chair­man Prof Clement Im­bert that four of its 11 cam­pus­es are to be shut down be­fore year’s end. The four cam­pus­es, at Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, Corinth and Val­sayn, will ei­ther be sold or rent­ed to help meet some of UTT’s fi­nan­cial needs.

Fac­ing a deficit of $57 mil­lion for 2021 af­ter its bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion was cut, chair­man Im­bert said it was the on­ly op­tion to pre­vent send­ing home more staff.

A clos­er look at the sit­u­a­tion would re­veal that some of the spend­ing on cam­pus­es and pro­grammes over the years cer­tain­ly seemed un­jus­ti­fied. How else does one ex­plain a 16-year old in­sti­tu­tion hav­ing 11 cam­pus­es and a stu­dent in­take which does not match a de­mand for such in­fra­struc­ture? In­deed, this me­dia house can­not help but won­der whether UTT may on­ly be post­pon­ing the in­evitable since, from the out­side look­ing in, it may still be im­pos­si­ble to re­tain staff un­der the cur­rent dire fi­nan­cial con­di­tions. The in­sti­tu­tion al­so cut 67 pro­fes­sors in 2018 and 199 non-aca­d­e­m­ic staff last year pur­su­ing sim­i­lar cost-cut­ting mea­sures to no avail.

Fur­ther­more, it seems un­like­ly UTT will se­cure the mas­sive stu­dent reg­is­tra­tion it will need to keep it­self afloat if gov­ern­ment fund­ing con­tin­ues at cur­rent low lev­els. This is be­cause more stu­dents, lo­cal­ly and abroad, are ac­cess­ing the more trust­ed Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ ser­vices. In fact, the ex­is­tence of the more es­tab­lished UWI was one of the ar­gu­ments used against pur­su­ing the lofty goals planned for UTT 16 years ago.

But even UWI is now fight­ing hard to stave off the ef­fects of re­duced fund­ing. Pres­i­dent of UWI’s Guild of Stu­dents War­ren An­der­son has la­belled the re­cent move to cut post­grad­u­ate as a gut punch. Not­ing the re­cent quick trans­for­ma­tion to on­line learn­ing, Mr An­der­son says this lat­est ac­tion will crip­ple cur­rent and prospec­tive stu­dents’ abil­i­ty to ac­cess high­er ed­u­ca­tion. The guild is des­per­ate­ly seek­ing a meet­ing with stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the is­sues which will af­fect the post­grad­u­ate stu­dents who now ac­cess GATE.

UWI it­self claims even be­fore this move, there had been a de­cline in post­grad­u­ate ad­mit­tance, with on­ly 1,172 new stu­dents en­rolled in cours­es cur­rent­ly. This was a slight de­cline for the same pe­ri­od last year, where there were 1,430 new­ly-en­rolled stu­dents.

The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, like oth­er sec­tors fund­ed by the gov­ern­ment, is one of sev­er­al se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the rav­ages of COVID-19. The sit­u­a­tion is not syn­ony­mous to T&T though, as ter­tiary lev­el en­rol­ment around the world has been sim­i­lar­ly af­fect­ed.

Hope­ful­ly, the re­cent na­tion­al stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion on ed­u­ca­tion would have dis­cussed how the next gen­er­a­tion of stu­dents will be able to ac­cess high­er learn­ing to take the coun­try for­ward post-COVID-19.