CUC president welcomes PM’s university initiative

PRIME MINISTER Patrick Manning has mooted the idea of the Caribbean Union College (CUC) becoming a fully recognised university and has received the support of new CUC President, Dr Trevor Gardner. Manning was speaking at the inauguration ceremony for Gardner on Saturday night at Crowne Plaza. He noted that the success of the CUC was even more noticeable given the fact that the Caribbean is woefully short of universities. There exists a virtual gap, he said, between what the institution has the potential to do and what needs to be done for the region.

“This leads one to wonder,” he said, “if it is not worth considering the expansion of this institution to a fully fledged university in its own right, as an inevitability over sufficient time, though sooner rather than later — with full accreditation from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago and if need be, the United States and/or others.”  The audience applauded loudly. The Caribbean, said Manning, faced questions of identity and self-determination. But Manning said he saw a role for the CUC. He praised the college for offering courses up to post-graduate level and noted that the Ministry of Education recognised CUC as a teacher-training college. Manning said the Caribbean was facing trying times. “In Trinidad we are working with Vision 2020.

The Cubans are still blockaded by the Americans, Haiti’s problems are legion, the Francophone islands are still “departments” of France, and the Anglophone Caribbean has pressing economic problems,” he said. Speaking at his inaugural ceremony at CUC yesterday, Gardner said he was delighted at hearing Manning’s commitment towards elevating CUC to the status of a university. Gardner pointed out that there needed to be some revamping of institutions that offer tertiary education, noting that any institution which lives on its history is deceiving its students. He promised the board of the college that he would be working within the framework set out by them. He went on to state that he considered himself privileged to have been asked to guide the college at this particular time and assured that he was committed to the task before him.