Nadaleen Singh

The Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (Gate) pro­gramme should be abol­ished and the Dol­lar-for-Dol­lar pro­gramme re­sumed. The sug­ges­tion was made yes­ter­day by Dr Roger Ho­sein, co-or­di­na­tor of the Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Unit, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

He was giv­ing an overview of the find­ings of a rev­enue man­age­ment con­fer­ence held in June. Ho­sein sug­gest­ed that giv­ing free tu­ition to prospec­tive stu­dents who were fi­nan­cial­ly well off would be wast­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey. In­stead, he be­lieves the sub­sidy should de­pend on the stu­dent's eco­nom­ic back­ground. "I think the time has prob­a­bly come to move from Gate and go back to Dol­lar-for-Dol­lar. Every­one who re­quires ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion would be main­tained, so you would have hor­i­zon­tal ef­fi­cien­cy with­out ver­ti­cal in­ef­fi­cien­cy."

Un­der the pre­vi­ous sub­sidy scheme, Dol­lar-for-Dol­lar, the Gov­ern­ment matched every dol­lar stu­dents put to­wards the cost of their ed­u­ca­tion. Ho­sein said un­der Gate, well-off stu­dents might be in­clined to spend their ex­tra mon­ey on lux­u­ry goods, such as ex­pen­sive rims for their cars. In the last fi­nan­cial year, the Gov­ern­ment spent $784 mil­lion on the Gate pro­gramme.

The pro­pos­al for Gate out­lined in the 2013 bud­get state­ment stat­ed: "This pro­gramme has, how­ev­er, been sub­ject­ed to some abuse by users and has pro­duced some un­de­sir­able re­sults. Dur­ing the course of the com­ing year we shall im­ple­ment a num­ber of mea­sures with the ob­jec­tive of elim­i­nat­ing waste and abuse, as fol­lows:

(1) The pro­gramme will re­fo­cus on the ar­eas of pri­or­i­ty study nec­es­sary to sup­port our strat­e­gy for eco­nom­ic and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment;

(2) Tu­ition fees for un­der­grad­u­ate pro­grammes at both pri­vate and pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions will be fund­ed at vary­ing rates based on their so­cio-eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ty;

(3) The Gate Clear­ance Pol­i­cy pro­gramme will ap­ply to all pub­lic and pri­vate ter­tiary-ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes; and

(4) More com­pre­hen­sive meth­ods on the de­ter­mi­na­tion of tu­ition fees at pub­lic and pri­vate ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions will be in­sti­tut­ed."

Ho­sein said Gate was "a clas­sic ex­am­ple of what not to do in an oil-rich econ­o­my."An­oth­er find­ing he re­vealed was the labour cli­mate. "We have cre­at­ed too many gain­ful jobs, too many un­sus­tain­able jobs," he said. "The un­em­ploy­ment rate, ac­cord­ing to the CSO (Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal of­fice) fig­ure, I think the sus­tain­able-em­ploy­ment rate is prob­a­bly about 83 to 85 per cent. "It means that you have a 15 per cent or there­abouts func­tion­al­ly un­sus­tain­able un­em­ploy­ment...That is some­thing we need to ag­gres­sive­ly look at."

Per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mau­rice Suite said on the ba­sis of in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, T&T might be head­ed to­ward a cri­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to the de­mon­etis­ing of shale gas. Suite al­so sug­gest­ed that there was need for con­tin­u­ous re­view of the fis­cal regime be­cause the en­vi­ron­ment was chang­ing. On the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, he said, the leg­is­la­tion was up for re­view and was be­ing looked at.