AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As en­rol­ment num­bers dwin­dle and fi­nan­cial con­cerns con­tin­ue to linger, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus is fight­ing to stay afloat by fo­cus­ing on strength­en­ing the uni­ver­si­ty’s chances of self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty and eco­nom­ic sur­vival.

Ac­cord­ing to Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, de­spite UWI of­fer­ing the low­est de­gree costs out of all re­gion­al cam­pus­es, dur­ing the 2021/22 pe­ri­od, stu­dent en­rol­ment num­bers for un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes de­creased by 8.7 per cent and 28 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. To­tal stu­dent en­rol­ment de­clined a fur­ther five per cent from 15,931 in the pre­vi­ous year to 15,130 stu­dents.

In ad­di­tion to un­der­grad­u­ate en­rol­ment drop­ping by a fur­ther 4 per cent from the pe­ri­od 2020-2021, there was al­so a 38 per cent de­crease in stu­dents pur­su­ing un­der­grad­u­ate cer­tifi­cates/diplo­mas.

There has al­so been a steady de­cline in en­rol­ment, most no­tably for post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes that were af­fect­ed by the Au­gust 2020 dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pense (GATE) for ter­tiary stu­dents in that cat­e­go­ry and ad­just­ments to oth­er cat­e­gories of the pro­gramme.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, both un­der­grad­u­ate and post-grad­u­ate stu­dents had ac­cess to the GATE fa­cil­i­ty, which pro­vid­ed free tu­ition to can­di­dates. Now, how­ev­er, un­der­grad­u­ate and oth­er stu­dent must un­der­go a means test to qual­i­fy and are able to ac­cess vary­ing lev­els of fund­ing based on meet­ing cer­tain cri­te­ria.

Speak­ing at the Cam­pus Coun­cil Meet­ing yes­ter­day, Belle An­toine said the uni­ver­si­ty had al­so been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by an 18.8 per cent re­duc­tion in Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions, which she be­lieves has added to the uni­ver­si­ty’s cur­rent fi­nan­cial strain.

Belle An­toine re­vealed that there was al­so a 16.8 per cent re­duc­tion in cam­pus staff due to the less­en­ing in­come.

“We were not able last year to in­crease tu­ition fees, as we had hoped, to make our­selves mar­ket ready and sus­tain­able and self-suf­fi­cient,” Belle An­toine said.

As part of the in­sti­tu­tion’s ef­fort to be­come self-sus­tain­able, Belle An­toine an­nounced the build­ing and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of a co­coa fac­to­ry, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre and oth­er en­tre­pre­neur­ial ini­tia­tives, that the uni­ver­si­ty plans to em­bark up­on.

She al­so an­nounced that the uni­ver­si­ty’s plans to utilise the va­cant UWI South Cam­pus, lo­cat­ed in Debe, to house the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine to en­sure con­tin­ued growth.

“Our cam­pus strat­e­gy is to build on the gains. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and so on. ... In fact, in­vest­ing in our fu­ture, tan­gi­bly, and in­tan­gi­bly,” Belle An­toine said.

Ac­cord­ing to UWI vice-chan­cel­lor, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, the Fac­ul­ty of the Med­ical Sci­ences was ‘ex­tra­or­di­nary’ and con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the coun­try’s COVID-19 man­age­ment and serv­ing the pub­lic.

“I be­lieve that the uni­ver­si­ty in 2020/21, has had its finest hour. I say this be­cause the way in which the uni­ver­si­ty has gone about work­ing with the gov­ern­ments and the Min­istry of Health, the pub­lic health in­fra­struc­ture across the re­gion in each ju­ris­dic­tion, the way in which our med­ical sci­ence col­leagues have gone about this mat­ter of serv­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est, has been ex­tra­or­di­nary… It had a lot to do with the role of the UWI, work­ing hand in glove with the Gov­ern­ment,” Beck­les said.

He said they were hop­ing to pig­gy­back on this suc­cess with the Glob­al School of med­i­cine ini­tia­tive. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted UWI would need the sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment for it to suc­ceed.

“From Mount Hope, through to Cou­va, all the way to Pe­nal/Debe, that spine will be­come the med­ical artery of the coun­try. This is an in­no­v­a­tive project but can on­ly come to fruition as a de­vel­op­men­tal ve­hi­cle for the coun­try if the Gov­ern­ment works with the cam­pus and the cam­pus works with the Gov­ern­ment,” Beck­les said.

Ac­cord­ing to Belle-An­toine, the South Cam­pus is cur­rent­ly un­der re­pair due to its lack of use since its com­ple­tion in 2019. She said this is ex­pect­ed to change with the re­fur­bish­ment as part of the cam­pus’ strate­gic plan to cre­ate con­sid­er­able rev­enue by boost­ing in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent re­cruit­ment.

“We want to em­pow­er what is now a dead space at the South Cam­pus, to bring that to life with the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine. In so do­ing, we can lever­age the con­sid­er­able ad­van­tages that we have al­ready, the rep­u­ta­tion of our med­ical fac­ul­ty and ac­cred­i­ta­tion sta­tus,” she said.

No es­ti­mat­ed date was giv­en for the open­ing of the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine or the es­tab­lish­ment of the uni­ver­si­ty’s co­coa fac­to­ry.

De­spite fi­nan­cial con­straints, the uni­ver­si­ty re­ceived a TT$6.7 mil­lion in­crease (TT$52.2 mil­lion) in ex­ter­nal­ly-fund­ed spe­cial re­search projects and schol­ar­ships for 2022, across all fac­ul­ties, adding to the uni­ver­si­ty’s aim to ex­pand its glob­al foot­print.