GATE TO PROGRESS

The Government Assistance for Tertiary Expenses (GATE) initiative launched on Tuesday to replace the Dollar for Dollar Programme as a vehicle for an optimum number of young Trinidad and Tobago citizens to readily access tertiary education, regardless of their income group, will benefit both recipients and the country. GATE will assist, in some cases with up to 100 percent funding, students from low income families with little or no collateral, factors which had all too often inhibited their securing of loans in the past for planned tertiary education. This will provide a vastly expanded group with a needed chance at upward mobility.

As with the former Dollar for Dollar Programme students attending both public and private tertiary institutions will receive grants to cover 50 percent of their fees. There is a difference, however, between GATE and the DFD plan. While those at public institutions will automatically qualify for the full 50 percent, there is an upper limit of $5,000 per year for those at private institutions. In turn, there is an additional distinguishing feature separating the two programmes. A means test will be applied to determine eligibility of students attending public institutions, for example the University of the West Indies, the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Technology and others falling within the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of TT, to receive further aid. And depending of the level of their ability or rather inability to pay will be able to access grants of up to 100 percent of tuition fees.

This would mean that scores of students, who though possessing the necessary aptitude, would have been denied an opportunity to obtain University or otherwise tertiary education because of financial constraints, would now be able access it. The Government plan will give them the chance to acquire a desired level of scholarship and skills and a critical gateway to progress. Meanwhile, a condition of the GATE programme, that recipients would be required to work in the public sector in Trinidad and Tobago for a stipulated period would mean a giving back of something tangible to the taxpayers and ipso facto the community.

In this way both the GATE recipients and the taxpayers whose funds would have made GATE possible will be beneficiaries. The students will benefit through the providing of the opportunity to qualify in disciplines that may otherwise have been denied them, and the taxpayers through the availability of a range of expanded service. The concept of GATE, not only as it relates to the eventual possible level of the grants to students, but the idea of a period of service for recipients in return for the financial assistance, is clearly several steps ahead of the Dollar for Dollar programme which, undoubtedly, was a strategy that had helped thousands.