2020 was ex­pect­ed to be a year of cel­e­bra­tion for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies St Au­gus­tine.

It was the year the cam­pus com­mem­o­rat­ed its 60th an­niver­sary of op­er­a­tion.

As has been the case for many since the COVID-19, any such cel­e­bra­tion was great­ly muf­fled in com­par­i­son to what may have been pre­vi­ous­ly arranged.

Sharon Christo­pher, chair of the Cam­pus Coun­cil for the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus in its an­nu­al said, “Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, this re­port would be a gold­en (ac­tu­al­ly di­a­mond) op­por­tu­ni­ty to look back at the 60-year his­to­ry of this cam­pus, to bask in its achieve­ments and to peer ten­ta­tive­ly in­to some hazy fu­ture. How­ev­er, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has de­liv­ered that far-flung fu­ture to our doorstep with warp speed—the ul­ti­mate in overnight de­liv­ery! And as the events of the past year have proven to the world, time is a lux­u­ry none of us should take for grant­ed.”

The pan­dem­ic forced the cam­pus to do some fi­nan­cial piv­ot­ing, with a sig­nif­i­cant amount of give and take as a re­sult.

Ac­cord­ing to the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus’ an­nu­al re­port to­tal fund­ing for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Ju­ly 2020 stood at TT$1,026.9 mil­lion.

The re­port not­ed this fig­ure re­flect­ed a de­crease of TT$13.5 mil­lion or 1.3 per cent be­low the pre­vi­ous year.

The re­port said that while gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions stayed ba­si­cal­ly flat for the past four years at TT$535.6 mil­lion, the uni­ver­si­ty list­ed three items which they were mon­i­tor­ing go­ing for­ward for their im­pact on fund­ing, these are Tu­ition Fees, Spe­cial Projects and Com­mer­cial Op­er­a­tions.

The re­port stat­ed, “Tu­ition and oth­er stu­dent fees showed a 2.5 per cent de­cline when com­pared to the year end­ed Ju­ly 31, 2019. Pop­u­la­tion de­mo­graph­ics shows a de­clin­ing num­ber for stu­dents in the age co­hort to en­ter uni­ver­si­ty. This trend is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue for the next five years.”

But the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus not­ed that based on the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment brought on by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, “even more has to be done to max­imise ef­fi­cien­cy.”

In this case it meant that some cuts had to be made.

To achieve this the re­port not­ed sev­er­al strate­gies to re­duce costs were adopt­ed. They in­clud­ed Freez­ing un­filled po­si­tions; Staff re­duc­tions due to at­tri­tion; Ser­vice con­tracts to part-time teach­ing staff re­duced from one year to nine months; Rene­go­ti­at­ing ser­vice agree­ment con­tracts with ven­dors to re­flect a 15 per cent re­duc­tion in cost; Re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of work­flow to re­duce over­time Im­pact; 15 per cent re­duc­tion in costs over time.

The re­port al­so not­ed that the Cam­pus Grants Com­mit­tee Bud­get was de­creased by $100M over the past four years.

In spite of this, fund­ing for op­er­a­tions, which is be­ing in­creas­ing­ly paid for from the self-fi­nanc­ing ef­forts of Cam­pus, UWI still record­ed a deficit of TT$30.5 mil­lion for the year end­ed Ju­ly 2020.

The re­port said, “The sur­plus record­ed be­fore pro­vi­sions for de­pre­ci­a­tion, em­ploy­ee ben­e­fit oblig­a­tions was TT$81.7 mil­lion, how­ev­er op­er­a­tions are not gen­er­at­ing suf­fi­cient fund­ing to re­place its plant, as re­flect­ed in the charge for de­pre­ci­a­tion, or fund the grow­ing pen­sion li­a­bil­i­ty, as ev­i­denced in the charge for em­ploy­ee ben­e­fit oblig­a­tions, hence the deficit record­ed for the year.”

The pan­dem­ic es­sen­tial­ly crip­pled stu­dent and as a re­sult com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty at the cam­pus. This trans­lat­ed to bad news for prop­er­ties owned, op­er­at­ed and tied to stu­dent ac­tiv­i­ty on or around cam­pus as that ul­ti­mate­ly led to jobs be­ing cut.

“The im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ham­pered the op­er­a­tions of Uni­ver­si­ty Inn and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre man­aged by the St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus En­ter­pris­es Co. Ltd. (SA­CEL). In April 2020 the SA­CEL Board took the de­ci­sion to close the op­er­a­tions of the Inn and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre and re­trench the af­fect­ed staff,” the re­port said.

Oth­er Com­mer­cial Op­er­a­tions tied to the Book­shop, Cen­tral Stores, Mul­ti-me­dia Cen­tre and Stu­dent Halls of Res­i­dence and the rental of com­mer­cial spaces on Cam­pus al­so took a hit.

The re­port not­ed that “Rev­enue of TT$24.3 mil­lion rep­re­sents a 26.8 per cent de­cline over the pre­vi­ous year with the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of the Cam­pus and its halls of res­i­dence on the on­set of the pan­dem­ic.”

File picture: UWI students at the St Augustine Campus.

ANISTO ALVES

With the pan­dem­ic still mas­sive­ly af­fect­ing the cam­pus, the uni­ver­si­ty is ex­pect­ing a sim­i­lar de­cline for 2021.

There were oth­er fac­tors that al­so con­tributed to wan­ing in­come to the Uni­ver­si­ty; the ad­just­ment to GATE fund­ing.

The re­port not­ed that “Spe­cial Projects and oth­er project in­come of TT$70.2 mil­lion in­clud­ed the gross in­come earned by UWI ROYTEC val­ued at TT$25.1 mil­lion and SA­CEL of TT$1.7 mil­lion. The com­par­a­tive for year 2018/2019 was TT$87.3 mil­lion with UWI ROYTEC’s gross rev­enue to­talling TT$27.4 mil­lion and SA­CEL’s TT$2.8 mil­lion.”

While TT$13.9 mil­lion of this de­cline came from Cam­pus op­er­a­tions where the im­me­di­ate im­pact of COVID-19 may have af­fect­ed the ex­e­cu­tion of the re­quired re­search, the re­port said, “UWI ROYTEC’s de­cline in rev­enue was due to re­duced en­rol­ment in for­eign ac­cred­it­ed pro­gramme of­fer­ings be­cause of the with­draw­al of GATE sup­port for stu­dents.”

The pan­dem­ic did, how­ev­er, to some ex­tent save the Uni­ver­si­ty some mon­ey on over­seas trav­el.

The re­port not­ed, “COVID-19 has had both a pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive im­pact on over­all ex­pen­di­ture. Sav­ings from re­duced over­seas trav­el ex­pens­es and util­i­ties were ab­sorbed by in­crease ICT ex­pen­di­ture in soft­ware up­grades and main­te­nance fees re­quired to sup­port on­line teach­ing.”

The re­port said, “To­tal ex­pen­di­ture for the year be­fore de­pre­ci­a­tion, em­ploy­ee ben­e­fits oblig­a­tions and fi­nance costs to­talled TT$945.2 mil­lion, a de­crease of ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$62 mil­lion or 6.2 per cent. This de­crease in over­all ex­pen­di­ture main­ly re­flects the re­duc­tion in staff cost be­cause of the pro­vi­sion for back pay in the pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year.”

2020 was al­so the year the uni­ver­si­ty was ex­pect­ed to wel­come the Pe­nal-Debe Cam­pus in­to its fold while al­so in­cor­po­rat­ing the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, in­stead both have be­come key com­po­nents of the coun­try’s stand against the virus with the hos­pi­tal hous­ing some of the most se­vere­ly af­fect­ed COVID-19 pa­tients.

This was not the on­ly way the uni­ver­si­ty in­ad­ver­tent­ly found it­self at the fore­front of the coun­try’s fight against the pan­dem­ic.

“Our ex­pe­ri­ence with COVID-19 shows us that one nev­er knows how an in­vest­ment made to­day could lead to in­valu­able re­wards lat­er. For in­stance, the in­vest­ments in a Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus in the 1980’s was frowned up­on at the time in some quar­ters. How­ev­er, we are reap­ing the re­wards of that in­vest­ment to­day in the form of a ro­bust pub­lic health sys­tem. Sim­i­lar­ly, the in­vest­ments in two re­cent projects un­ex­pect­ed­ly con­tributed equip­ment and ex­per­tise that bol­stered the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to con­duct PCR (Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tion) test­ing. None of these were in­tend­ed out­comes, but these and oth­er in­vest­ments over the 60-year his­to­ry of our Cam­pus have yield­ed sig­nif­i­cant val­ue,” said Christo­pher.

But the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus is not the on­ly one of the five UWI cam­pus­es that has been fac­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties.

And the pan­dem­ic has not been the on­ly cause of the prob­lem.

Ac­cord­ing to UWI’s fi­nan­cial re­port and com­bined ac­counts for the year end­ed Ju­ly 31, 2019 the uni­ver­si­ty made a to­tal com­pre­hen­sive loss of US$52.9 mil­lion.

The year be­fore that the loss was US$32.1 mil­lion.

UWI start­ed as a uni­ver­si­ty col­lege of Lon­don in Ja­maica with 33 med­ical stu­dents in 1948.

To­day it boasts of al­most 50,000 stu­dents and five cam­pus­es: Mona in Ja­maica, Cave Hill in Bar­ba­dos, Five Is­lands in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, its Open Cam­pus, and St Au­gus­tine in T&T.

It is a “not-for-prof­it” ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion pro­vid­ing high­er ed­u­ca­tion to 17 con­tribut­ing Caribbean coun­tries.

Now its Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les has launched Op­er­a­tion Rev­enue Rev­o­lu­tion 75+ (Op­er­a­tion RR75+) “ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly and ex­clu­sive­ly to ad­dress­ing its fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

Beck­les not­ed that in the pri­or five-year op­er­a­tional plan, themed “The Rep­u­ta­tion Rev­o­lu­tion”, the Uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on re­build­ing its brand, and rad­i­cal­ly up­grad­ing its rep­u­ta­tion re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly as a pre-con­di­tion for the sec­ond phase.

“We could not go to the re­gion and world for re­sources and de­vel­op­ment part­ner­ships with our brand and rep­u­ta­tion in ques­tion. We had to put our house in good or­der be­fore go­ing out in­to the very com­pet­i­tive high­er ed­u­ca­tion world,” Beck­les said.

UWI is now ready for a “ful­ly fledged rev­enue rev­o­lu­tion,” Beck­les said.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for us is not a game chang­er, but a su­per ac­cel­er­a­tor. Our thoughts and strate­gies pre­ced­ed the 2020 cat­a­stro­phe,” he said.

Chair­man of Cari­com, Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton said the con­tribut­ing gov­ern­ments are solid­ly be­hind the re­gion­al uni­ver­si­ty in lead­ing fi­nan­cial re­forms for greater au­ton­o­my and en­dorsed the quest to rad­i­cal­ly al­ter its fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stance.

Beck­les said the uni­ver­si­ty can­not con­tin­ue to grow, in­no­vate, and pros­per sole­ly with­in its do­mes­tic fi­nan­cial base.

He recog­nised the dev­as­ta­tion of the re­gion­al econ­o­my by COVID-19 lead­ing to gov­ern­ments’ in­abil­i­ty to fund it at ap­proved lev­el.

And ar­gued that the glob­al gaze was now at cen­tre stage with­in the five-year op­er­a­tional plan.

“The Vice-Chan­cel­lor not­ed that the cur­rent fund­ing mod­el, char­ac­terised by large gov­ern­ment ar­rears and sub­se­quent im­pair­ment and write-offs, pro­duces a bud­getary gap that must now be closed,” a re­lease from UWI stat­ed.

“De­spite the fact that the deficit dri­vers are out­side of man­age­ment’s con­trol, we are own­ing them, and tak­ing on the project of clos­ing the gap by gen­er­at­ing cash to end the 30-year-old era of deficit fi­nanc­ing and mov­ing to bal­ance bud­get­ing with­in two years,” Beck­les stat­ed.

Op­er­a­tion RR75+, which sees its first tar­get as the 75th an­niver­sary of the Uni­ver­si­ty in 2023 and look­ing be­yond, seeks to cre­ate a fund­ing mod­el as fol­lows:

• 50 per cent rev­enue from The UWI’s con­tribut­ing Caribbean gov­ern­ments and 50 per cent rev­enue from the Uni­ver­si­ty’s en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tions in­clud­ing:

• 20 per cent re­gion­al stu­dent fees

• 10 per cent in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent fees

• 10 per cent busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty

• Five per cent pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment

• Five per cent en­dow­ment sec­tor (in­clud­ing alum­ni)

1. The Uni­ver­si­ty will see sig­nif­i­cant ac­tiv­i­ty on both sides of the bal­ance sheet, be­gin­ning with a 10 per cent ex­pen­di­ture re­duc­tion per year, for two years.

2. On the rev­enue side, the Uni­ver­si­ty will im­ple­ment its Ten Point Fi­nan­cial Plan; in this con­text the fol­low­ing projects have al­ready been ini­ti­at­ed:

• Each cam­pus will de­vel­op bank­able projects for in­come gen­er­a­tion, and prin­ci­pals will be held ac­count­able for their ca­pac­i­ty to in­ject fi­nan­cial out­comes in­to cam­pus bud­gets.

• The UWI En­ter­prise will be launched as a hold­ing com­pa­ny de­signed to pro­mote com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty across the cam­pus­es with ‘spin offs’ and in­cu­ba­tors in all fac­ul­ties.

• The Uni­ver­si­ty in­tends to take its busi­ness en­ter­pris­es to re­gion­al cap­i­tal mar­kets through the of­fer of UWI Busi­ness Bonds and re­lat­ed fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments.

• The com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of The UWI’s vast in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty will be ini­ti­at­ed as soon as its IP pol­i­cy is ap­proved.

• The pro­ject­ed launch in 2022 of The UWI Glob­al Cam­pus, build­ing on the foot­print of the ex­ist­ing Open Cam­pus, will dri­ve in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents in­to The UWI sys­tem. This will be a self-fi­nanc­ing on­line ‘for prof­it’ cam­pus. The Glob­al cam­pus is ex­pect­ed to deeply im­pact the tra­di­tion­al op­er­a­tions and fi­nan­cial tra­jec­to­ry of the Uni­ver­si­ty.

• There will be an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of en­try in­to new re­gion­al mar­kets, es­pe­cial­ly in the ar­eas of mi­cro-cre­den­tial­ing of­fer­ings and com­mer­cial ori­ent­ed aca­d­e­m­ic ser­vices.

• There will be a new dri­ve in­to the en­dow­ment mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly to se­cure re­sources for large scale re­gion­al re­search, and schol­ar­ships for his­tor­i­cal­ly mar­gin­alised stu­dents.

• There will be a re­vamp­ing of the re­gion­al and glob­al alum­ni giv­ing op­er­a­tions.

• New glob­al part­ner­ships will be placed on a sound com­mer­cial foot­ing in or­der to pro­mote a val­ue added busi­ness cul­ture with­in fac­ul­ties and re­search in­sti­tutes.

• Con­ver­sa­tions will be in­ten­si­fied with gov­ern­ments and the pri­vate sec­tor in or­der to cre­ate uni­ver­si­ty owned land bank, and a pri­vate sec­tor In­vest­ment Fund for in­sti­tu­tion­al and in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

“These strate­gies are al­ready in ac­tion, some more ad­vanced than oth­ers, and are al­ready im­pact­ing the gov­er­nance mod­el of the Uni­ver­si­ty, while chang­ing its busi­ness cul­ture,” UWI stat­ed.

“The grand ob­jec­tive is to en­hance the fi­nan­cial strength of the Uni­ver­si­ty, sta­bilise the con­tri­bu­tions of gov­ern­ments, re­duce costs to re­gion­al stu­dents, and trans­form over­all gov­er­nance in the best in­ter­est of the pub­lic aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tion,” it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Vice-Chan­cel­lor Beck­les, “The UWI will emerge as a hy­brid acad­e­my, main­tain­ing its iden­ti­ty and brand as the re­gion’s pre­mier first-class ‘pub­lic good’ uni­ver­si­ty, while con­tain­ing and dri­ven by a ro­bust com­mer­cial, in­come-gen­er­at­ing op­er­a­tion ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able self-fi­nanc­ing en­ter­prise. Op­er­a­tion RR75+ is there­fore the tip­ping point in the 21st cen­tu­ry jour­ney and evo­lu­tion of The UWI. It’s a pro­gramme of sys­temic change and trans­for­ma­tion. It’s the fi­nal phase of the change cul­ture long an­tic­i­pat­ed. It’s a part­ner­ship mod­el in which aca­d­e­m­ic lead­er­ship will part­ner pro­gres­sive­ly with own­ers of pri­vate cap­i­tal with de­vel­op­ment good­will, and with the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty with a con­scious­ness of com­mit­ment to the ad­vance­ment of the Caribbean. The ‘for prof­it’ el­e­ment will not en­gage preda­tor pri­vate wealth own­ers but will seek out and work with eth­i­cal de­vel­op­ment in­vestors and those com­mit­ted to Caribbean na­tion build­ing.”