Earlier this month we reported on Vice-Chancellor Lawrence Carrington’s concerns about UG’s finances. These were contained in a report which he had submitted to the University Council on February 28, and which this newspaper had seen. It appears that UG had found it necessary to ask the Ministry of Education to intercede with the Ministry of Finance for a review of its subvention. This fell short of what had been requested for 2011, and was inadequate to meet expenditure.
As we reported, there had been no response from government up to that point. We quoted the Vice-Chancellor as saying in his report: “This circumstance is particularly distressing because when I assumed my appointment as Vice-Chancellor, indications were (at levels of the Government to which I had access) that the Government would seek to increase its support once the University had an approved strategic plan and had taken steps to deal with quality assurance issues.”
He requested $250M as the minimum additional sum to be considered by the Ministry of Finance, going on to explain that the university’s financial statements had shown an operational deficit in excess of $150M for each year. For each of those years the Student Loan Agency had been requested to advance $200M in order to make up the deficit, but observed that this was hardly a solution to the problem. The Vice-Chancellor also referred to the general rise in the price for goods, services and salaries, and the fact that the 2011 budget had made provision for a few of the things which would initiate some necessary improvements.
Last Sunday we carried a follow-up story on this matter, but were unable to obtain any comment from either Minister of Education Shaik Baksh or UG Pro-Chancellor Prem Misir. Two days later, however, the taciturn Minister suddenly found his voice, although it must be said he did not speak directly; he communicated from behind the screen of the Government Information Agency, which prevented his exposure to any direct questioning from the media in general and this newspaper in particular. According to GINA, the Minister said that the government had asked the UG administration for a review of the university’s strategic plan to which any increased funding was tied, but that this review had not been forthcoming.
The strategic plan itself covered the period 2009-2012, and had been approved by the UG Council and submitted to the government in December 2009. It has four broad goals which in a very general sense cover improving teaching, particularly in the fields of science and technology; improving institutional governance and management; broadening the financial basis of the university; and upgrading the teaching, learning and service environment.
It seems the government was not at all enamoured of the plan, despite the fact that it had been approved by the UG Council, which is dominated by government appointees. As revealed by Minister Baksh last week, it was subjected to a lot of discussion both in the ministry and in Cabinet, and as a consequence of these confabulations, no less than 19 concerns were identified and pointed out to the UG administration. This notwithstanding, continued the Minister, there had been no amendments to the document to date.
The first thing to be said is that Mr Baksh’s own words would seem to suggest that the government is no believer in academic freedom and simply thinks that it should treat the Vice-Chancellor of the university and his administration as primary schoolchildren and demand they should amend their plan according to its dictates. Now this is not to say that the government, as an important funding source of the university and with a vested interest in improving the quality of higher education should not have its concerns taken account of. In this small society, however, with its unfortunate history of political interference in academic affairs, the temptation will always be for the political directorate to impose its will – as it seems to be doing in this case.
The government has had the UG plan in its possession since the end of 2009; this is now March 2011. Why has it been sitting on its hands all this time? And these amendments, it must be said, are being handed down by a Cabinet which in a general sense (as opposed to individuals among its complement) is not known for its academic proclivities, or as having a familiarity with the debates concerning the purpose of a university and how the difficult relationship with a government should be mapped out. What prevented Mr Baksh from calling in Professor Carrington and his senior officers to discuss some of the administration’s concerns in a spirit of rational dialogue? Nothing, it seems, except the ruling party’s obsession to maintain total control over every institution in this country.
And then there were Minister Baksh’s specific objections to the plan. He referred to the “substantial” increase in emoluments for academic staff in 2010; however, the Vice-Chancellor pointed out in his report that salary increases had been an approved cost, and therefore one would have expected that the subventions would have increased by enough to sustain these. Mr Baksh, it seems, had no argument to advance in response to this obvious point. He spoke of cost savings, such as some programmes being run with small numbers, and adverted to the prolonged registration processes at UG and lecturers not marking scripts on time, among other things. The latter two, however, are administrative issues which should hardly be grounds for withholding an increase in the government grant – or it might be said, an increase in fees, although that will not be entertained in an election year.
Then there was the Minister’s advocacy of a return to the system of external examiners, which in the first place is a recommendation, if not a decision, which should come from the Academic Board and not the government, and in the second, would seem to undercut his own position on cost savings, since such examiners always have to be paid a fee. Are we to understand, therefore, that should the Academic Board seek a reinstitution of arrangements with external examiners, the Ministry of Finance would then increase its subvention to cover this cost? Mr Baksh also adverted to the quality of graduates, one of the things which the plan is intended to address, but for which the government won’t grant the money so that various measures can be implemented.
Another concern, GINA reported the Minister as itemising, was that UG should consider the means by which the heavy social science registration could be converted to an increase in science and technology admissions. Leaving aside the question that this is not easily done at the university level, it should be pointed out that contrary to what Mr Baksh believes, students would have to be encouraged to do science much lower down the educational system before there would be an increased intake of potential scientists and technologists at the tertiary level. No less a person than the Minister himself has admitted there is a shortage of science teachers in the school system. Then there is the state of the laboratories, etc, at UG, which GINA reported him as saying are slated to be modernized (among other things) under a US$10M World Bank project. So what, precisely, is the administration of UG supposed to do to increase the science intake in the interim while they wait for work to be done on the laboratories, and for the government to agree to pay academic salaries at a level which might attract qualified science teaching staff?
And finally, there is Mr Baksh’s view that there should be a radical shift towards distance mode and Information Technology delivery as a primary, rather than a supporting mode of tertiary education delivery. He and his government have short memories. At the time they ran helter skelter into setting up the Tain campus, it was suggested to them that ‘distance mode’ was the way to go, rather than a second campus duplicating courses and teaching staff. The existence of Tain has starved Turkeyen of necessary funding, which is not to suggest that Tain too doesn’t have its own difficulties. It is just to observe that the government never was prepared to pour the kind of funding into the two locations which they needed to attract staff and maintain standards.
As we have said before, the bottom line of all of this is that you can’t have a university on the cheap. If the administration is really not prepared to fund UG, then it should consider converting it to a technology institute, and paying for those who want a degree and meet the admission requirements, to study in UWI. It may well work out cheaper, and cheapness, it appears, is all the government wants.
