JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

160 teens follow ‘Pathway to Success’

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
585 days ago
20230716

Even though there has been a de­crease in en­rol­ment be­tween of be­tween five and sev­en per cent over some time at UWI-Roytec, sev­er­al ini­tia­tives have been put in place to at­tract more stu­dents for 2023.

This was re­vealed by ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Wendy Au­gus­tus, dur­ing an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, fol­low­ing the launch of “Path­way to Suc­cess,” which was held on Wednes­day.

Au­gus­tus said the low en­rol­ment is across the board at the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions.

UWI Roytec un­der­stands the fi­nan­cial con­straints and it is against this back­ground the in­sti­tu­tion of­fers a pay­ment plan to stu­dents, so they will not be left be­hind, Au­gust said.

“It is re­al­ly about stu­dents and if they are not com­ing, it means they have some sort of an is­sue that would pre­vent them from ac­cess­ing ed­u­ca­tion. Our role is to bridge that gap and re­move any bar­ri­ers that they may have to ac­cess,” the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor ex­plained.

She said it is im­por­tant to meet stu­dents and their needs, find out what are the un­der­ly­ing caus­es, and pro­vide sup­port to over­come such chal­lenges.

Au­gus­tus men­tioned that every year Roytec had an en­rol­ment of close to 2,000 stu­dents and over some time the in­sti­tu­tion would have ex­pe­ri­enced a five to sev­en per cent de­crease in en­rol­ment.

“Ed­u­ca­tion is for all. It is both a hu­man right and a pub­lic good and be­cause it is a pub­lic good, it’s im­por­tant that we get the com­mu­ni­ties we serve thor­ough­ly en­gaged, con­nect­ed, and deeply com­mit­ted to the in­sti­tu­tion so that we are bet­ter able to serve them,” she re­marked.

Last No­vem­ber, vice-chan­cel­lor of The Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, while speak­ing to a Roytec grad­u­ates, said that the Caribbean re­gion had the low­est en­rol­ment of stu­dents in high­er ed­u­ca­tion in the en­tire hemi­sphere.

He said this was “trag­ic for many rea­sons” as it was hold­ing back the re­gion’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“In our Caribbean re­gion, those who have par­tic­i­pat­ed and are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the jour­ney of high­er ed­u­ca­tion rep­re­sent a very small per­cent­age of our pop­u­la­tion.

“The sta­tis­tics in them­selves are very dis­turb­ing; if you take our hemi­sphere from Alas­ka in the north to Ar­genti­na in the south, with­in our hemi­sphere our Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty has the low­est en­rol­ment in post-sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion,” Beck­les ex­pressed.

He said this was al­so dis­turb­ing be­cause all the the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal ev­i­dence that was avail­able showed very clear­ly that there was a di­rect cor­re­la­tion be­tween the per­cent­age of cit­i­zens in the so­ci­ety who had the ben­e­fit of high­er ed­u­ca­tion and the po­ten­tial of that com­mu­ni­ty for sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Path­way to suc­cess

The ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of UWI-Roytec said for the pe­ri­od Ju­ly 17 to Au­gust 11, the in­sti­tu­tion will be en­gag­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 160 stu­dents who are await­ing CSEC & CAPE re­sults to pre­pare them for the next step in their ed­u­ca­tion jour­ney.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tus, this ex­er­cise is free as it is be­ing spon­sored by West­ern Unit­ed Cred­it Union, Uni­com­er Trinidad Ltd, and Mag­ic Mist Ser­vices and the long-term plan is to cre­ate em­ploy­ment for the stu­dents.

How­ev­er, she in­di­cat­ed that while teach­ing and learn­ing is their core busi­ness, it does not mean that they on­ly serve un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate stu­dents on cam­pus.

“We al­so sup­port the com­mu­ni­ties in which they are em­bed­ded and even more so in times of cri­sis,” said Au­gus­tus.

She high­light­ed that the neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions of COVID-19 re­gard­ing learn­ing loss, low­er em­ploy­ment lev­els, com­bined with crime im­pact more than just the dis­ad­van­taged stu­dent, the un­em­ployed, or the vic­tims of crime. The im­pact is be­ing felt in fam­i­lies, the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty, and wider so­ci­ety.

“Liv­ing in cri­sis or through crises, as we are, of­ten fa­cil­i­tates an ac­com­pa­ny­ing loss of the abil­i­ty of our young peo­ple and some com­mu­ni­ties to hope for or imag­ine a brighter fu­ture, to imag­ine them­selves as suc­cess­ful in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline or area of in­ter­est,” Au­gus­tus said.

Speak­ing on the is­sue of safe­ty, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor out­lined that Roytec has in­creased se­cu­ri­ty on the premis­es, since the up­surge in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try.

“The se­cu­ri­ty comes in from time to time to talk with the stu­dents about how im­por­tant their safe­ty is and that they should be aware of their sur­round­ings at all times. We al­so have a shut­tle ser­vice so stu­dents would not have to walk in­to the down­town area at night,” Au­gus­tus added.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored