Imbert: Another UWI campus for Orange Grove

Government is giving UWI (University of the West Indies), almost $500 million this year, and is also planning to build  another campus at Orange Grove to deal with the problem of overcrowding at the nation’s primary tertiary institution. Tertiary Education Minister Colm Imbert made the announcement in the House of Representatives during the debate on the 2005 Budget. He noted that UWI, which has retained the same land space, had a mere 3,000 students in the days when he was a student there, but had reached 13,500 students today, and was targetting an enrollment of 20,000 by 2006/2007. But the landscape could not tolerate this “ambitious student expansion,” he said. Recalling that in 1986, 250 acres of land at Orange Grove were reserved for expansion of UWI, Imbert stated that he had already held preliminary discussions with the principal of UWI about establishing another campus there. “So that the overcrowding that is taking place at UWI can be solved by the establishment of new facilities,” he said. Imbert was somewhat critical of the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Technology (TTIT), which was established by the UNC, saying it was somewhere at the level of a polytechnic, lacking any legal status. He said after 42 years, UWI Engineering Faculty offers five engineering programmes.

But TTIT was offering 14 degree programmes “and of course the whole question of quality comes into play.” Imbert said the other problem with TTIT was that the campus was dominated by part-time students, thereby lacking the environment of a university. The TTIT will become one of the campuses of the University of Trinidad and Tobago, along with other campuses in Mausica/O’Meara, Couva, Wallerfield (main campus) and Mayaro/Galeota. There are already university programmes in marine training being conducted at Chaguaramas for mariners, he said. Imbert stated that the post-graduate programme would be very focused and a number of “top-class first world” highly recognised universities and organisations such as Cambridge, South Hampton Institute, Energy Institute in Madria and Tappa Industries (India) were going to be involved. He said it was a fallacy to say that Government was throwing money into make-work programmes and not directing money into training people, and giving them marketable skills. He said one of Government’s objectives in acquiring developed country status was to get more and more school-leavers to enter specialised programmes at the post-secondary and tertiary level since this was a feature of every successful developed country in the world.

He said in 2001, “When the UNC was retired in the public interest,”  the enrolment in post-secondary/tertiary programmes was 21,000 — of which 15,800 were in public sector institutions, while 5,000 were in private sector institutions like Roytec and School of Accounting and Management. In 2005 academic year the enrolment swelled to 36,000, with public institutions accounting for 28,700 and private institutions 7,400. The bulk of these students were enrolled at UWI (13,500) and COSTAATT — which includes the technical colleges like John Donaldson (7,000). Imbert said while UNC had the country “in the doldrums” with a ten percent participation rate in higher education, the PNM had taken it to 17 percent in less than three years. He added that Government expected it to get to 20 percent by January. He said this figure did not include the 10,000 students enrolled in post-secondary programmes such as the National Energy Skills Training Programmes in electrical installation and mechanical maintenance, pipe fixing, automative technology and welding installation (4774 students); HYPE programme (2159 trainees); Laventille Technology Centre (400 trainees) and Must where 1,000 youths were being trained in carpentry, plumbing and joinery.

This gave the country a current participation rate in post-secondary and tertiary education of 25 percent. Noting that $1 billion will be spent on higher education and training in 2004/2005, Imbert stated that he could think of no better way to spend the petroleum dollars. He had a sense of fulfilment, he said, having assisted in the process of helping young people. He said some of them, who were academically challenged, economically challenged and were tempted to become delinquent, now had the chance to enter structured skills programmes. Imbert  said Government hoped to get 100,000 youths in tertiary and post-secondary institutions by 2020. Saying that he couldn’t understand why the Opposition didn’t want to support the Budget, Imbert said there was no fiscal irresponsibility because $1 billion was going to the Revenue Stabilisation Fund. He said by not supporting the Budget the UNC was saying they could not support the increase to pensioners of $150, nor the increase in public assistance and disability allowance of $200.