Arthur Lok Jack braces for enrollment drop

However, she says while enrollment may be affected, the institutions cannot give up but must continue to provide their services and be able to provide the facts about the benefits of education to an individual.

“What we have to do is define and continue to emphasise to citizens and students the importance of education in the long term because education is a tool and a mechanism to take us and catapult us out of many situations, such as poverty and take us to the next level.” Persadie made the comments during an interview with Newsday following an Accreditation and GATE Funding Informative Session at the school on Thursday evening.

The session dealt with the present and future of funding for education in TT; international accreditation vs foreign degree; the importance and relevance of accreditation by the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT); and “Why now is the right time to pursue your MBA.” Participants at the session also heard from Nigel Forgenie, the Chief Executive Officer of the Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme (YTEPP) on the benefits of getting an International MBA from the Lok Jack Business School as he did.

Persadie said in light of the current economic situation and the GATE means test, the school will have to take a new look at its recruitment and see how it can adapt in the event there is a decline in enrollment.

“So it doesn’t mean that Lok Jack will say ‘Okay, recruitment and enrollment are down so we will downsize.’ We won’t say that, we will say what other services can we offer and we are not only postgrad, we are also undergrad, we are in company development, we are in short term programmes, we are in research, so we impact differently and while one sector might take a little hit, we can impact somewhere else and make up the shortfall and continue to survive.

So we don’t rely on one mechanism or one revenue earner to survive.”