It was not all that long ago that this coun­try was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ex­plo­sion in en­rol­ments in ter­tiary-lev­el pro­grammes, a di­rect re­sult of the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition (GATE) Pro­gramme which pro­vid­ed as­sis­tance to cit­i­zens for un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes at recog­nised lo­cal and re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

There was a di­rect im­pact on stu­dent num­bers at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), which in­creased by 134 per cent in the aca­d­e­m­ic years from 2000/01 to 2014/15.

The num­ber of grad­u­ates from the cam­pus more than dou­bled dur­ing that pe­ri­od, in­creas­ing from 1,637 to 3,870.

These were mea­sur­able re­sults from a pol­i­cy to make high­er ed­u­ca­tion more ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able in the quest for a larg­er pool of qual­i­fied cit­i­zens ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic agen­da.

GATE, in­tro­duced in 2004 dur­ing the tenure of the late Patrick Man­ning, re­sult­ed from the for­mer prime min­is­ter’s vi­sion to make ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion avail­able to thou­sands who would not have been able to af­ford it.

With the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­gramme and sub­se­quent cre­ation of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), T&T was well on the way to be­ing on par with de­vel­oped na­tions in terms of the lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion in ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion.

This was in align­ment with the goal of de­vel­op­ing a high­ly skilled work­force, part of the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Vi­sion 2020 agen­da for T&T to achieve de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus.

Al­though cir­cum­stances have changed over the years, it is even more im­por­tant now for high­er ed­u­ca­tion to re­main a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty.

A World Bank study done years ago found ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion to be es­sen­tial for fos­ter­ing growth, re­duc­ing pover­ty and boost­ing the pros­per­i­ty of a na­tion. Those find­ings should un­der­score the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing and ex­pand­ing pro­grammes for the de­vel­op­ment of a well-ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion.

The sig­nif­i­cant so­cial and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of hav­ing cit­i­zens who are more em­ploy­able and pro­duc­tive should be suf­fi­cient mo­ti­va­tion to take an­oth­er look at GATE and any oth­er pro­grammes that in­crease ac­cess to de­gree and diplo­ma pro­grammes.

There should be con­cern about the sit­u­a­tion at UWI, St Au­gus­tine, where en­rol­ment is dwin­dling and there is a strug­gle to re­gain fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.

The chal­lenges fac­ing the cam­pus are to a large ex­tent due to the scal­ing back of GATE in 2020, when the coun­try was fac­ing strained eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances.

UWI Prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, in her ad­dress at a Cam­pus Coun­cil Meet­ing, gave some in­sight in­to the neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions of scal­ing back GATE and how the ef­fects of a de­ci­sion made when T&T was in the throes of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, con­tin­ue to be felt at ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions.

If fig­ures shared by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert are any­thing to go by, the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion has im­proved.

While it might not be pru­dent to re­turn to the GATE arrange­ment ex­ist­ing be­fore 2020, there are suf­fi­cient grounds now for a re­view.

T&T needs to do much more to in­crease the num­ber of high­ly skilled work­ers with­in this pop­u­la­tion.

In a world in­creas­ing­ly dri­ven by com­pet­i­tive­ness and in­no­va­tion, fo­cus must be fixed on in­creas­ing ac­cess to ter­tiary train­ing; T&T can’t af­ford to be head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

It is time, there­fore, to take an­oth­er look at GATE.