Despite the University of Guyana’s financial straits, the government is still to activate a US$10 million World Bank loan to overhaul the science and technology departments, outgoing Vice-Chancellor Professor Lawrence Carrington revealed on Friday.
In a farewell address to university staff in the George Walcott Lecture Theatre, at the Turkeyen Campus, Carrington said the university has been chipping away at its “financial embarrassment,” but funding remains a problem that has to be addressed along with a clear state policy on its role in developing the country.
Carrington dubbed the negotiation of the World Bank Science and Technology Support Project the “single most important success,” while explaining that it would see an input to the University of Guyana of about US$10 million over a five-year period. The funds would be dedicated towards the rehabilitation and refurbishing of the science and technology laboratory facilities in four faculties at Turkeyen, the review and reform of the science curriculum and support for research towards low carbon themes. He added that the proposal includes the creation of a fibre-optic ring and networking for Information Technology capacity in the Turkeyen Campus and appropriate complementary capacity and linkage at the Berbice Campus.
However, Carrington reported that the loan to the government is not yet activated because the Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh is still to sign a crucial financial loan document.
“We have written to the new Minister of Education (and to the old minister for that matter) requesting audience to discuss the matter and our Chancellor has been speaking to the Minister of Finance, but the matter is still incomplete,” he said. “My hope is that the university will continue to press for this loan to be activated and to cooperate with the processes that it will entail,” he added.
Although Carrington did not indicate the period of delay, last December, visiting Professor Dr Rory Fraser said that the proposal had been submitted to Singh six months prior.
‘A problem’
During his address, Carrington bluntly stated that “money is a problem,” while adding that he regretted not having been able to advance a consultation on the financing of tertiary education for Guyana.
He said the university has been skilful “in doing more with less,” while sharing his admiration for what some have been able to accomplish with the “pittances that represent their annual budgets” at the departmental and faculty levels.
“The cry from outside has been that we should increase our efficiency in the use of funds. Heaven knows we try. Others say we must run the university like a business enterprise.
But they do not talk of the capital investment that businesses start with in order to earn their profits. These are not excuses. They are realities. In order to earn one has to invest,” he added, noting that the university has exposed its need by submitting deficit budgets to the government.
Carrington added that financing has to be addressed within a larger context than is presently being done. In this regard, he noted that part of the input has to be “a clear state policy on the place of tertiary education and research in national development.” He was nevertheless optimistic that the university will be able to advance towards a consultative dialogue that will ensure it a significantly more tenable financial position with the genuine development of a capacity to sustain itself.
Last year, the government support for the university was questioned when spokesmen for the PPP/C administration, including then Education Minister Shaik Baksh, declared that additional government funding must require a cost-review for various aspects of the university’s operations.
In addition to financing, he identified the university’s staffing, staffing policy and competitiveness as an employer as areas where there is significant unfinished business. In particular, he said the “elephant in the room” was staff salaries, which he said were crucial to ensuring the university’s competitiveness.
“We will not justify the label of university if all we can show in a teaching and research staff of 359 academics are 9 professors and 17 senior lecturers. Only two departments are headed by professors, both temporary, and only four by senior lecturers, one temporary. If all we can offer a professor at the top of our scales is the equivalent of US$1,725, we will not be able to compete with a Caribbean competitor offering the equivalent of US$8,429 at a comparable level.
So our planning has to shift the matter of emoluments to the top of the agenda,” he recalled telling the last annual business meeting of the University Council held in November last year.
He noted that since then there have been more proposals than concrete achievements, but added that there have been some improvements in terms and conditions of service for university staff. Among the “baby steps” he identified were establishing a credit line to Dell computers that allows the university, staff and other members of the university community to purchase computers at significantly reduced prices; changing the policy on the participation of members of non-academic staff in study programmes that require attendance during standard working hours; and formulating proposals for duty-free concessions on the purchase of vehicles on a wider scale.
More recently, Carrington added, proposals have been drafted for improving the policy on staffing and staff recruitment and it has already been discussed at the level of the University Council. The Council, he said, is in favour of the idea and wants fuller proposals. “We must be aware though that a policy of that nature cannot work in isolation from more attractive terms and conditions of work and sensibly competitive emoluments and reward,” he pointed out.
The future
With the university’s 50th anniversary a year away, Carrington noted that a new strategic plan is needed to take the institution into its second half century.
“…You will have to build the next half-century by making wise and bold decisions in shaping our new plan,” he said, while noting that the review of the current 2009 to 2012 plan provides an important plank for the university to shape its future.
Recalling his initial assessment of the university governance structure as archaic, he said the university’s statutes, rules, regulations, procedures and policies belong to an era long past and cannot be left to clutter the 21st century. “We need to bring UG in line with what obtains at other universities around the world,” he declared, while pointing out that it succeeded in obtaining from the Caribbean Develop-ment Bank (CDB) a substantial grant to allow it to engage a consulting firm to review its regulatory framework to improve operations. In a matter of days, he said the university is scheduled to engage in negotiations with the successful bidder.
“The outcome of the project must not be another shelf report. It has to be an active engagement in change of the many oppressive and inhibiting features of the [University of Guyana] that have prevented it for many decades from fulfilling the potential it was expected to mobilise.
The archaic governance and management and administrative structures of the university must no longer be allowed to provide an excuse or a shelter for inefficiency and incompetence,” he said.
He added that the review would be an opportunity to debate and propose the solutions at a structural level that would lead the university into genuinely contemporary operational styles and emphasised to staff the importance of their going beyond collaboration in the process, to advocacy for the changes that would be proposed.
