The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI), St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus has seen an in­crease in both un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate en­rol­ment this aca­d­e­m­ic year.

The in­crease comes de­spite the re­cent glob­al trend of de­clin­ing uni­ver­si­ty en­rol­ments.

The 2024 Ma­tric­u­la­tion and Wel­come Cer­e­mo­ny held at The UWI Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (UWI SPEC) in St. Au­gus­tine, was themed Pel­i­cans: Get Ready to Soar and cel­e­brat­ed the of­fi­cial in­duc­tion of 3000 stu­dents from over 30 coun­tries in­to The UWI aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty.

Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie An­toine, em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of pur­su­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion dur­ing chal­leng­ing glob­al times, say­ing, "You are now a part of this lega­cy. Your choice to pur­sue ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion de­spite the wor­ry­ing trend of de­creas­ing en­rol­ment world­wide means you have tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward achiev­ing your full po­ten­tial in life. If you have any doubts about whether you chose the right path, let me as­sure you that a UWI de­gree will be one of your most valu­able as­sets."

Af­firm­ing that a UWI de­gree equips stu­dents with es­sen­tial skills sought af­ter by em­ploy­ers across the globe, she added that, "Since 1948, The UWI has pro­duced over 240,000 grad­u­ates, who can be found in every sec­tor in the Caribbean and be­yond – the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, civ­il so­ci­ety, in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, and more."