Students need $$ for tertiary education

THE EXECUTIVE Director of the School of Business and Computer Science (SBCS), Robin Maraj, has appealed to Government to provide adequate funding for students who cannot afford tertiary level education. Maraj said the SBCS was not included in Government’s Dollar-for-Dollar Programme and as a result several students had difficulty getting the  necessary tuition funds to attend the institute. “If the Government is really serious about improving the tertiary level participation rate, then it cannot ignore institute like us,” he said. More than 200 SBCS students graduated on Saturday, having completed internationally recognised Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes through distance learning from prestigious United Kingdom universities such as Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh Business School, University of Greenwich, University of London and the University of Sunderland.

Programmes included BSc Honours in Computing, BA Honours in Business Studies, BSc Computing and Information Systems, BSc Management, BSc Information Systems and Management and Masters in Business Administration. Maraj said there was increased participation in the programmes this year and the graduating class had been “outstanding, with five students getting First Class Honours from the University of Greenwich for the BSc Computing degree, while two received First Class Honours for the University of London’s Computer Information Systems degree.” Maraj said: “ I am talking about students who are doing the identical exams to students at English universities and they have obtained First Class Honours. This demonstrates the level of students we have and the type of support facilities in Trinidad.”

He said approximately 70 percent of the graduates had been part-time students and their new degrees would allow them to move up the corporate ladder. The younger students, he said, now have a degree qualification which will allow them to go into the world of work or move on to the Post Graduate level. “We are talking about 200 plus graduates who now have a degree, be it undergraduate or post graduate, and who are now in fact able to move from whatever social and economic class they are in at present. This is a powerful thing.” Maraj said the achievements of the graduates would benefit the economy as a whole, providing the private sector with a higher level of talent. “I think this augurs well for us because it means that our organisations would be able to now raise their level of performance because once you have these new knowledge workers who have been exposed to all the modern ideas, they are only going to improve.”