(Trinidad Express) Government has rejected a proposal from The University of the West Indies (The UWI), St Augustine, for an increase in tuition fees.
The proposal for the increase came in response to the Government’s intention to implement a ten-per cent reduction in its subvention to The UWI for the 2022-23 academic year—a cut of over $50 million from the current subvention of over $500 million a year.
However, Government is not in support of a fee increase and has asked the campus executive to review its expenditure, paying close attention to the number of courses it offers as well as the size of its enrolment in order to operate within budget.
This was revealed at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference by Minister of Finance and (current) chairman of the university’s Grant Committee, Colm Imbert.
Imbert said one of the problems was that enrolment at St Augustine was in excess of 16,000 students and the campus had over 300 course offerings.
“So you have a vast array of courses and you have 16,000, 17,000 students… The university needs to look at all the courses that they want the Government and the country to pay for.
“We are not going to tell them what courses to put on, but we believe that they need to look at all these courses they are offering and decide which ones the Government should pay for.
“That is our response to their proposal that they increase tuition fees. Because we think that that increase in tuition fees should be a last resort (and that) The UWI has to look within first, and see whether they have not overextended themselves. Because the cost to the State is directly proportional to the number of students and the number of courses that are being offered,” Imbert stated.
More courses, more money
Imbert said what had been happening over the last three years is that Barbados and Jamaica have been cutting back in terms of the amount of money that they have available to them to pay, and T&T has been faced with a challenge in which the St Augustine campus has been “continuing to ask us for large sums of money. So the more students you have and the more courses you offer, your costs go up”.
He said the Government established a committee on May 9 to look at the fee-increase proposal. The committee, which was chaired by MP for Port of Spain South Keith Scotland and comprised Imbert, Camille Robinson-Regis and Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, met with the outgoing principal, Prof Brian Copeland, and incoming principal, Dr Rose Marie Belle Antoine, who made their proposal.
“And our position to them is that they need to take a look at the size of their enrolment and the number of course offerings to see whether that is the reason why their costs are so high,” Imbert said.
He said the Government contributed directly about $517 million annually to The UWI, and then the Government spends at least $200 million on GATE funding.
“So that is $700 million that Trinidad and Tobago spends as a country on the university every year, and I am being conservative, since it could be more,” Imbert said.
He said because of the problems with Covid and other financial challenges, the Government has had to limit the St Augustine campus to a certain sum of money. “And what we have found is that the St Augustine campus has found it difficult to live within the budget we have given them,” he said.
