A coming of age

The literal explosion of the demand for tertiary education pursued in Trinidad and Tobago should see this year’s figure of 35,000 students attending tertiary institutions here rising rapidly to 125,000 by the year 2015, Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education, Mr Colm Imbert, has thrown out. The thirst for tertiary education has already been demonstrated by the increase over the last three years from the 2001 figure of 20,000 to 35,000 or approximately 75 percent.  Last year’s jump was in the order of 40 percent.  The demand keeps rising, a clear indication of the perceived need by today’s young people to be trained and qualified up to the tertiary level to meet the upwardly changing demands of the market  place.  In turn, whether regionally as in the case of the University of the West Indies, or in individual Caricom member states, as at the University of Guyana, founded in 1962, or the University of Trinidad and Tobago, which was formally launched this year, the planners are committed to the provision of tertiary education which even as it maintains international standards, is increasingly more relevant to the needs of the region.

Quality is not sacrificed, whether at the tertiary level or at the level immediately preceding it, the secondary level.  Since 1972, the carefully structured Caribbean Examinations Council’s Ordinary Level Examinations have gradually replaced the University of Cambridge O Level Examinations.  Within recent years the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) Advanced Level examinations have been replacing the University of Cambridge Advanced Level as a springboard for entrance to University.  This country goes CAPE from next year. Accessing tertiary education overseas has been and continues to be costly, as Mr Imbert noted.  In addition,  Trinidad and Tobago students attending approved tertiary institutions here are entitled to Government’s absorption of half of their tuition fees.  But there is the plus, however, as a spokesperson for the Caribbean Union College pointed out, of a United States degree being obtained through studies here at a significantly reduced cost!

What is just as important as the cost factor to the student, however, or perhaps even more important, is that necessary steps have been taken and continue to be taken to ensure that the quality of tertiary education offered here remains high.  For example, the University of Trinidad and Tobago recently instituted partnerships with seven international institutions and universities including the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; the University of Texas, Austin, United States of America; University of the West Indies’ Faculty of Engineering; Instituto Superior de la Energia, Spain; Tata Infotech, India and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Canada. Meanwhile, the expanding tertiary education population should be seen as an investment by the students not only in self-development and their own future, but as an investment in the development of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean Community of Nations. While, admittedly, all tertiary education in Trinidad and Tobago will shortly be free to nationals nonetheless the growing demand for tertiary education represents the accepting of the challenge to the upgrading of their efficiency in an increasingly competitive age.

Instead of the situation which obtained up to the middle 1940s where a substantial number of principals and senior masters and mistresses (teachers) of leading secondary schools were either English or British university-trained, there has been a desired shifting of the pendulum.  Today, the majority of principals, vice principals, senior teachers and teachers generally at secondary schools are University of the West Indies graduates. Soon an increasing number will be from the University of Trinidad and Tobago as well with many of them either having received their tertiary education at half of the cost of the  normal tuition fees, or at no cost at all.  In turn, many of the middle management and senior management of corporate houses will be graduates of the University of the West Indies, the University of Trinidad and Tobago and the several other tertiary institutions which dot the education landscape. It is a coming of age of the society in general and of the citizens, in particular, who are  committed both to their upward mobility and Trinidad and Tobago’s progress.