State-funded tertiary education a right or a privilege?

Economist Dr Daren Conrad advocated the former stance while the latter view was championed with equal passion by UWI deputy principal, Dr Rhoda Reddock, at the forum held by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES ) and the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS).

Conrad proposed that education is both a public service and a private benefit but slightly more so the latter, meaning that the recipient should pay part even if by a deferred payment plan. He quoted economist Milton Friedman’s view that for primary and secondary levels, the role of education is for citizenship, but that at tertiary level it is for the benefit of that given individual.Conrad said mass-production of tertiary education leads to wage-suppression, and that in TT now graduates are frustrated in jobs they could have gotten with their CAPE results. Saying mass tertiary education can wreck the TT economy and lead to a brain-drain, he urged a targeted approach that takes account of the labour market and the country’s developmental needs.

He said literature suggests education is a privilege, not a right.

Reddock took a different view.

She lamented that trying to fit tertiary education to national priorities usually relates to economic factors but ignores what is happening to the country’s social fabric, including the society’s social, psychological, environmental, health, artistic, aesthetic and other needs. Reddock referred the audience to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Looking at various models of funding tertiary education, she contrasted the United States where students spend the rest of their lives paying off their university loans, to the Nordic nations which give free education from cradle to the grave, resulting in the world’s highest standards of living.

Reddock remarked how noticeable it was in the recent US Presidential Election that pollsters kept referring to either college-education persons or otherwise, as she suggested an absence of mass tertiary education in the US and UK.

UWI Guild president, Makesi Peters, a member of the Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses (GATE) Committee, said GATE expenditure had risen from $102 million in 2004 to $624 million in 2010 to $757 million in 2011. Tertiary enrolment grew from 15 percent in 2004 to 40 percent in 2008 to over 60 percent now.

He drew sighs of exasperation from the audience when he said some voice(s ) on the GATE Committee had argued that persons over 50 years - who will be debarred from GATE - are no longer able to contribute to this society’s development. Peters admitted to complexities in the means test, such as the case of someone earning the $10,000 limit but who has three children to send to university.