An­tho­ny Wil­son

Last week Fri­day, Dr Roger Ho­sein, an econ­o­mist at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, rec­om­mend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment should scrap the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (GATE) pro­gramme, which was ini­ti­at­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2004.

Speak­ing at a bpTT func­tion at the Hilton to dis­cuss the re­lease of the pro­ceed­ings of June's rev­enue man­age­ment con­fer­ence, Ho­sein ad­vo­cat­ed that GATE be re­placed by the Dol­lar-for-Dol­lar pro­gramme, with the ad­di­tion of a means test.

Un­der the Dol­lar-for-Dol­lar pro­gramme, which was de­signed un­der the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, the State fund­ed paid 50 per cent of the tu­ition fees for all new stu­dents en­rolled at sev­en pub­licly fund­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

The Dol­lar-for-Dol­lar was re­placed by GATE in Sep­tem­ber 2004, when the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion kept the 50 per cent fund­ing for ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion but ex­pand­ed the pro­gramme to in­clude ap­proved pri­vate­ly fund­ed, ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions.

Un­der the orig­i­nal GATE pro­gramme, which last­ed from Sep­tem­ber 2004 to Sep­tem­ber 2006, stu­dents from low-in­come fam­i­lies would have been able to ac­cess up to 100 per cent of the tu­ition fees if they com­plet­ed a means test ques­tion­naire and were able to prove that they were un­able to af­ford to pay 50 per cent of the tu­ition fees.

Un­der the re­vised GATE pro­gramme, the PNM gov­ern­ment scrapped the need for a means test to qual­i­fy for Gov­ern­ment fund­ing of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, mean­ing that for the last sev­en aca­d­e­m­ic years the Gov­ern­ment has paid 100 per cent of the tu­ition fees for any T&T cit­i­zen en­rolled in an un­der­grad­u­ate pro­gramme at 19 pub­licly fund­ed, ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions in six coun­tries: T&T, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, The Ba­hamas as well as UWI's School of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies in Mon­ster­rat and St Kitts.

GATE, ac­cord­ing to a No­vem­ber 2011 of­fi­cial re­port on the pro­gramme, al­so cov­ers 100 per cent of the tu­ition fees of T&T cit­i­zens at­tend­ing un­der­grad­u­ate cours­es at 43 pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions rang­ing from St George's Uni­ver­si­ty in Grena­da to Trinidad and To­ba­go Col­lege of Ther­a­peu­tic Mas­sage. It cov­ers as well 50 per cent of the tu­ition fees of T&T cit­i­zens at­tend­ing post-grad­u­ate pro­grammes.

In the 2006 bud­get, de­liv­ered on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2005, then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who was al­so the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, said: The GATE Pro­gramme re­placed the Dol­lar for Dol­lar Ed­u­ca­tion Plan in Sep­tem­ber 2004. In my 2005 Bud­get State­ment I in­di­cat­ed that we in­tend­ed to pro­vide free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions by the first of Jan­u­ary, 2008. Since then, our rev­enue sit­u­a­tion has im­proved con­sid­er­ably. I am there­fore pleased to an­nounce, Mr. Speak­er, that with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2006, all na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go en­rolled at pub­lic ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, name­ly UWI, UTT, COSTAATT and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions where the Gov­ern­ment spon­sors stu­dents, will be el­i­gi­ble for free tu­ition, that is free pub­lic ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion."

In my view-and this is some­thing that has been writ­ten about in this space since 2005-the de­ci­sion by the T&T gov­ern­ment at the start of the 2006 fis­cal year to ad­just the GATE pro­gramme to pay 100 per cent of the tu­ition fees of any T&T cit­i­zen seek­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion is one of this coun­try's best post-In­de­pen­dence pol­i­cy de­ci­sions.

Dr Ho­sein de­scribes the pay­ment of 100 per cent of ter­tiary-lev­el fees by the Gov­ern­ment as an in­ef­fi­cient use of State funds and a "man­i­fes­ta­tion of the re­source curse prob­lem at work" be­cause it means that the State is ed­u­cat­ing cit­i­zens whose par­ents can af­ford to ed­u­cate them or who can af­ford to ed­u­cate them­selves.

By that log­ic, there should be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pric­ing of all of the goods and ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the State such as wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, health­care, pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion and sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.

If the log­ic that GATE is an in­vest­ment and not a sub­sidy is not ac­cept­ed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, then there is lit­tle doubt that "free" sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion and health­care would be next.

If "rich" cit­i­zens should pay half the cost of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, why should they not al­so pay half the cost of send­ing their chil­dren to "pres­tige" sec­ondary schools."

In fact, if the rich can pay half the cost of ed­u­ca­tion, why should they not pay 100 per cent of it?

The uni­ver­sal fund­ing of ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion by the State must be seen, not as a sub­sidy, but as an in­vest­ment of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars in the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try's hu­man re­source cap­i­tal.

If not by GATE, how is T&T go­ing to achieve a work­force that is able to dri­ve di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion both with­in its en­er­gy sec­tor and in­to oth­er sec­tors that would al­low the coun­try to con­tin­ue liv­ing in the man­ner that it has be­come ac­cus­tomed.

An ar­gu­ment that the Gov­ern­ment should re­turn to on­ly 50 per cent of tu­ition fees and on­ly fund ed­u­ca­tion at pub­licly fund­ed in­sti­tu­tions is a ret­ro­grade step and will mean thou­sands of mid­dle-in­come house­holds hav­ing to go in­to debt to ed­u­cate their chil­dren and them­selves or not be­ing able to af­ford it at all.

It would be im­pos­si­ble for T&T to achieve the kind of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship need­ed to trans­form the coun­try from an econ­o­my whose rev­enues are dom­i­nat­ed by the en­er­gy sec­tor with­out the con­tin­ued in­vest­ment that is be­ing made in the ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion from the nat­ur­al gas wind­fall.

It can be ar­gued that the GATE pro­gramme is al­so an ef­fec­tive means of medi­um-term pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion as there is a clear and in­dis­putable link be­tween at­taint­ment of ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion and the abil­i­ty of the re­cip­i­ent to earn an in­come that places them well above the pover­ty line.

If, as I am ar­gu­ing, GATE is an in­vest­ment in the coun­try's hu­man re­sources, the most im­por­tant point, and the thing that should be oc­cu­py­ing the minds of the UWI aca­d­e­mics, is to de­ter­mine the re­turn on the in­vest­ment (ROI) that T&T is get­ting, how is the ROI be­ing mea­sured and how can that ROI be im­proved.

It seems that those who de­signed Dol­lar-for-Dol­lar and GATE, did not build in to these sys­tems of state fund­ing of ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion a method of mea­sur­ing the ROI, the im­pact that these re­cip­i­ents of "free" ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion are hav­ing on their so­ci­ety, their com­mu­ni­ty, their fam­i­lies. Even a cost/ben­e­fit analy­sis of the pro­gramme would suf­fice.

UWI's Eco­nom­ics de­part­ment needs to get crack­ing on track­ing the jobs that all GATE grad­u­ates have been em­ployed in since 2004, their in­comes and their con­tri­bu­tions to the wider so­ci­ety be­fore ad­vanc­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal ar­gu­ments that would lim­it state fund­ing for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.

GATE is more than UWI. It's es­ti­mat­ed that some 50,000 cit­i­zens are grant­ed GATE?fund­ing a year. It would be in­ter­est­ing to find out how many of those ac­cess­ing GATE are re­cent sec­ondary school grad­u­ates and how many of them are re­turn­ing to UWI or UTT or SCBS to en­hance their ed­u­ca­tion and qual­i­fi­ca­tions-for ex­am­ple, a teacher who is work­ing on a DipEd or on a de­gree.

In­tro­duc­ing a means test to de­ter­mine who qual­i­fies for GATE fund­ing has the po­ten­tial to skew the analy­sis as a teacher with 12 years ser­vice do­ing a DipEd may be earn­ing over $9,000 a month. Un­der Dr Ho­sein's rec­om­men­da­tion, this per­son may be ex­clud­ed from qual­i­fy­ing for GATE even though the qual­i­ty of her teach­ing is like­ly to im­prove sig­nif­i­cant­ly hav­ing done the course of study and she is like­ly to earn an in­cre­ment in her salary for her ed­u­ca­tion­al at­tain­ment.