Gov’t recognises UWI drop outs due to tutition fees

The Government of Barbados recognises that its decision to implement tuition fees for Barbadians citizens pursuing studies at the campuses of the University of the West Indies (UWI), has led to some students dropping out.

“Yes, some people would have fallen through and we have to find a way to get more of them back in,” stressed Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Christopher Sinckler.

Continuing the debate on the Appropriation Bill 2017 yesterday, he made it clear that it was not a callous, wild, indifferent decision by the Democratic Labour Party to ask students to pay a fee.

In fact, he described that decision as “painful” stating that if in the future they are able to reverse the payment of such fees, they will.

Sinckler reminded the House of Assembly that the figures he presented during Monday’s presentation showed an explosion in University level intake and spending to the extent where other parts of the system have suffered immeasurable.

“You have to be able to recognise that if something is going in a direction that it ought not to go, you should be able to make course corrections. I believe that we did not make the kind of course corrections that were required in both administrations frankly, in relation to University education.”

“As a country with limited resources and with particular needs in the areas of science and technology, cultural industries, renewable energy, agriculture – we cannot continue to say that we are just producing people and we are judging our success based on the amount of people who graduate from UWI. If its 3,000 persons this year, it must be 6,000 next year. And if it is 6,000 next year, it must be 8,000 the following year and that alone serves as the measurement for success. We then have to go beyond that and deconstruct those figures, to find out how many people are being educated in the areas in which the society has it greatest need.”

“I believe the decision we took to ask students to pay a little bit for their tuition eventually will show many decades from now to have been the correct decision, in saving an overall system of tertiary education at University level and has allowed us to buy some time, to do some more “engineering” as is required to ensure that we get the right amount of graduates out, in the right areas that we desire, at the right levels that are required,” the Finance Minister added.