UTT’S AIM: CARICOM JOBs AND WEALTH GENERATION

The advice by the soon to be opened University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) that it has implemented a Transition Studies Programme aimed at facilitating students who do not possess the normal university entry requirements ultimately will benefit both the targetted individuals and their communities. This means that scores of persons who had stumbled on the way to Advanced Level examinations, and as a result of this did not qualify for entry to UTT, will be provided with the needed opportunity to develop their potential.

The University in marketing this initiative has pointed out that “mature students will be assessed individually on the basis of experience and qualifications for all programmes.” The aim, it has stated, is to strengthen the students’ “foundation skills in English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Literacy and Life Skills for CXC graduates over a one-year period.” In turn, successful applicants will be eligible for assistance under the Government Assisted for Tuition Expenses (GATE) and/or UTT Scholarships. This represents an opening of windows to the world of tertiary education and personal advances for many who could otherwise have been denied a chance at meaningful upward mobility. This will mean additional expenditure by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago of millions of dollars annually to give the proverbial helping hand to many who would not have had the opportunity to access University education. Many such, who decades ago in a then colonial Trinidad and Tobago, failed to win a scholarship by a mark or two, all too often ended up frustrated pen pushers, and some in the more extreme cases, as alcoholics.

It is not without significance that exactly 100 years after a colonial Government in 1904 reduced from four to three the number of scholarships it was prepared to award to Trinidad and Tobago students to further their studies at University (in the UK) that this move is being made. For the record, the three scholarships then described as Island Scholarships, cost the Government the lordly sum of 600 pounds sterling or TT$2,880! This, clearly, is in sharp contrast to what will be the overall cost of the UTT scholarships, as well as that of the National and Additional scholarships and what have you awarded by Government. This runs, or rather will run into tens of millions of dollars, particularly when Government’s subsidiary of the University of Trinidad and Tobago is factored into the equation.

Additionally, there is a similarity between the point of access of the scholarships which were awarded in 1904 and the targets of the UTT’s Transition Studies Programme. In 1904 the scholarships had been awarded on the basis of the Senior Cambridge Examination which in essence, was the equivalent of today’s Caribbean Examinations Council Ordinary level examination. So that the targetted achievement groups at both ends of the century were more or less the same. The only difference being that the University of Trinidad and Tobago will be looking as well at persons who may have taken the Advanced Level exam, but were not successful to qualify them for University entry.

What is critical today, however, is that while a century ago an emphasis on the wildest possible access to a secondary and tertiary education had been clearly missing in a colonial environment, today the emphasis is there. Meanwhile, the declared intent of the University of Trinidad and Tobago is “to be an entrepreneurial University designed to discover and develop entrepreneurs, commercialise research and development, and spawn companies for wealth generation and sustainable job creation towards the enhancement of the quality of life of all individuals, families and communities of the Republic of TT and the Caribbean.” In short, the University is positioning itself — and this is important for the Region— to be a major factor in CARICOM development.