(Jamaica Gleaner) The council of the University of the West Indies (UWI) has rejected a recommendation to increase student fees.
The recommendation was made in the July 2020 Chancellor’s Report on Governance.
The commission, chaired by Sir Dennis Byron, had laid out a financial model which would result in a 100 percent fee increase.
The commission had proposed a 60:40 cost-sharing model with 40 percent of tuition to be paid by students.
Currently, students pay tuition fees equivalent to 20 percent of the cost of academic programmes.
In March 2021, Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles had also rejected the recommendation.
“The idea of moving from students paying a maximum of 20 percent up to 40 percent, I’m sure the public will say ‘This is a huge leap’. What would that mean for enrolment? What would it mean for access?” Beckles had questioned at the time.
The council held its final deliberations last Friday, following almost two years of consultations and the submission of the report from the review committee led by University Registrar, Dr Maurice D. Smith.
“This would pose an existential threat to the university, Caribbean society, and economy. The review committee described this recommendation as being outside the terms of reference of the Byron Commission and residing in the domain of Governments constituted as the University Grants Committee,” a UWI spokesperson said in a press release yesterday.
The review committee noted that there were no specific objections to 92 of the 95 recommendations.
The university council and the review committee also rejected a recommendation to abolish the University Finance and General Purposes Committee (U-F&GPC) and the Campus F&GPC, which are chaired by the Vice-Chancellor and Principals, respectively.
The Byron Report had proposed that these committees be replaced by executive committees, chaired by the chancellor or his nominee.
“Described as the core of the university’s management which reports to council from which it takes policy directives; council was advised that the abolition of the U-F&GPC would impair the capacity of the vice-chancellor and his executive management team to maintain the regional character of the university.
“Its abolishment, it was proffered, would weaken the implementation of a ‘ONE UWI’ vision and mandate as embedded in the Treaty of Chaguaramas,” the spokesperson noted.
The UWI’s council also argued that replacing the committees with executive sub-committees would be considered a destabilisation of the democratic, inclusionary, and diverse intellectual character of the academic institution.
