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.