Universities under financial pressure – Trinidad Guardian

Few­er cit­i­zens of T&T are at­tend­ing high­er ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions as the changes to the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme has meant the door is closed for some of them and the coun­try’s uni­ver­si­ties are brac­ing for the po­ten­tial fall­out of gov­ern­ment’s planned re­view of the pro­gramme.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to sev­er­al providers of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and all ad­mit that since peo­ple have to do a means test to qual­i­fy for GATE and since it is not in the main, avail­able to peo­ple do­ing post-grad­u­ate stud­ies, in­sti­tu­tions have seen their fund­ing dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced.

Now the gov­ern­ment has cut $35 mil­lion from Uni­ver­si­ty fund­ing and is to re­view the op­er­a­tions of the scheme. Added to the chal­lenges posed by the gen­er­al state of the econ­o­my as a re­sult of COVID-19, this has caused se­ri­ous wor­ry for many in­sti­tu­tions.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian (SBG), Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland, Pro Vice Chan­cel­lor and Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine said UWI has had to grap­ple with the sud­den shocks that COVID-19 pre­sent­ed since March 2020 and would have to wait on the de­ci­sion of the gov­ern­ment to de­ter­mine what ad­just­ments need­ed to be made.

Copeland said: “We al­so would hope that any new ad­just­ments to GATE would not af­fect en­rol­ment but that per­sons wish­ing to pur­sue high­er ed­u­ca­tion al­so would, mind­ful of the ben­e­fits of an in­vest­ment in a good Uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, con­sid­er avail­ing them­selves of loans from banks and cred­it unions.”

In an in­ter­view with the SBG, Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) Vice Pres­i­dent of Cor­po­rate Op­er­a­tions Dr Za­meer Mo­hammed said stu­dents looked for­ward to an eas­ing of their tu­ition fees with as­sis­tance from the GATE pro­gramme “and with the fur­ther cut­back as we’ve been hear­ing—this is go­ing to pose a chal­lenge for both stu­dents for en­rol­ment and for fi­nan­cial re­turns.”

UWI Roytec Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor (ED) Wendy Au­gus­tus ar­tic­u­lat­ed to the SBG that while the pan­dem­ic has pro­pelled the in­sti­tu­tion to be­come stronger, the fi­nan­cial and en­rol­ment im­pli­ca­tions of GATEs re­view “will be dire.”

Au­gus­tus ex­pressed that the hope that “full con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to is­sues of eq­ui­ty, es­pe­cial­ly so for those for whom equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty does not mean equal­i­ty of ac­cess.” Ac­cord­ing to the UWI Roytec ED, hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment is a ne­ces­si­ty for dri­ving the econ­o­my and this should in­form any de­ci­sions made by the gov­ern­ment re­lat­ing to fund­ing.

She added: “Hope­ful­ly, ed­u­ca­tors would be in­volved in the de­ci­sion mak­ing and the pop­u­la­tion giv­en time for any like­ly ad­just­ment.”

This is the sec­ond dis­rup­tion like­ly to come about as it per­tains to the GATE pro­gramme as the first was the in­tro­duc­tion of means test­ing—which al­lowed stu­dents with greater over­all fi­nan­cial con­straints to re­ceive more fund­ing than those that have the abil­i­ty to off­set costs.

How­ev­er, means test­ing has had im­pli­ca­tions as well. While UTT re­port­ed that its Sep­tem­ber 2020 ad­mis­sion of stu­dents was promis­ing, Dr Mo­hammed con­tend­ed that there was a gen­er­al flat­ten­ing of en­rol­ment for the new in­take of stu­dents. He added: “That has to do with a num­ber of things: with GATE is­sues and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to GATE, you know it’s now a means test, so its not as en­abling as it used to be for ob­vi­ous rea­sons—fi­nan­cial con­straints.”

Mo­hammed said while UTT re­lied on var­i­ous sources of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion (trans­fers from the gov­ern­ment, non-aca­d­e­m­ic of­fer­ings to pri­vate sec­tor and in­ter­na­tion­al grant fund­ing) its cur­rent fi­nan­cial po­si­tion is chal­lenged like all oth­er high­er ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions in T&T and in the glob­al in­dus­try.

The CEO of the UWIs Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness Mar­i­ano Browne told the SBG that in­sti­tu­tions once had the abil­i­ty to ex­pand be­cause of GATE fund­ing, but now as fund­ing is de­creas­ing and has al­ready de­creased—so would the ab­sorp­tion size of stu­dents com­ing in­to the sys­tem.

He added that ed­u­ca­tion is an in­vest­ment in the fu­ture, and when the fu­ture is un­cer­tain prospec­tive stu­dents ei­ther post­pone their ed­u­ca­tion or match their ed­u­ca­tion choice with the lim­it­ed amount of funds they pos­sess.

With an econ­o­my that was al­ready de­pressed be­fore COVID-19 and the con­trac­tion steep­en­ing as the pan­dem­ic caus­es greater dis­rup­tion, Browne re­vealed that the grad­u­ate school’s in­come has fall­en by 50 per cent and it al­so had to ad­just its ex­pens­es by 50 per cent as well. He added: “And that means at every lev­el.”

As the prospect of a de­crease in GATE fund­ing looms large, Browne has con­tend­ed that it will im­pact all pub­lic ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions alike.

How­ev­er, Dr Gillian Paul, Pres­i­dent of the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and the Ap­plied Arts of T&T (COSTAATT) high­light­ed to the SBG that the uni­ver­si­ty had no­ticed for a cou­ple of years that the GATE re­im­burse­ments were not keep­ing pace with the amount of rev­enue gen­er­at­ed each year.

She added that the board and man­age­ment has been at work on chang­ing the school’s busi­ness mod­el to sus­tain the op­er­a­tions, which is not heav­i­ly de­pen­dant on GATE, us­ing the nec­es­sary tran­si­tion to on­line course de­liv­ery due to the pan­dem­ic to tap in­to new mar­kets and op­por­tu­ni­ties (UTT and UWI Roytec ex­pressed the same to the SBG).

The re­view of GATE, Paul said, “is un­der­stand­ing in a way be­cause Gov­ern­ment is look­ing at all its com­mit­ments.” She con­tin­ued: “This year is the tough year where we have to make choic­es.”

Paul recog­nised that COSTAATT is ex­posed to high­er lev­els of risk dur­ing this pe­ri­od be­cause of its dis­tinc­tive mis­sion to sup­port prospec­tive stu­dents who pos­sess the ap­ti­tude for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion but are fi­nan­cial­ly im­paired. There­fore, with fi­nan­cial aid funds un­der strain in a time of se­vere eco­nom­ic de­cline, Paul im­plied that this mis­sion is now threat­ened in light of de­vel­op­ments with GATE.

How­ev­er, the COSTAATT pres­i­dent ex­pressed that cor­po­rate bod­ies in T&T know the qual­i­ty of work pro­duced at the in­sti­tu­tion and she re­mained con­fi­dent that they would as­sist in schol­ar­ship fund­ing for stu­dents who would not be able to af­ford tu­ition.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean (USC) Dr Hi­lary Bow­man in­di­cat­ed to the SBG that if neg­a­tive, the re­view would have a tan­gi­ble ef­fect on the in­sti­tu­tion that has al­ready been fi­nan­cial­ly hit.

Con­tin­ues on SBG5

The prin­ci­pals of both USC and the UWI St Au­gus­tine have ex­pressed that sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue loss­es were in­curred as com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty on the cam­pus has been halt­ed and on-cam­pus dor­mi­to­ries have al­so not been utilised be­cause of the tran­si­tion to on­line teach­ing.

Nonethe­less, both of the in­sti­tu­tions (UWI St Au­gus­tine and UTT) along­side UWI Roytec and UTT have in­di­cat­ed that en­rol­ment has been steady and made no men­tion of class­es be­ing can­celled. The ED of UWI Roytec men­tioned that “class­es would have been pooled and class size in­creased to avoid class can­cel­la­tion”.

This was not the case with some pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions like the School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence Glob­al Learn­ing In­sti­tute (SBCS GLI) and CTS Col­lege of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence (CTSCBCS) had to can­cel class­es.

While ED of CTSCBCS Ravi Ra­goonath said that some class­es were not can­celled be­cause of de­mand but be­cause of In­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ing bod­ies be­ing un­able to fa­cil­i­tate the quick tran­si­tion to on­line learn­ing, the ED of SBCS Robin Maraj said that many of the prac­ti­cal cours­es at the school were can­celled be­cause they are lab­o­ra­to­ry based.

This prob­lem has al­so chal­lenged COSTAATT, where Paul said that many of the stu­dents that were near­ing grad­u­a­tion for cours­es like nurs­ing, the­atre and so­cial work were struck with dis­ap­point­ment due to COVID-19 hav­oc. While some pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions do not re­ceive GATE fund­ing – COVID-19 has dis­rupt­ed not on­ly their class­es, but cash flows. Di­rec­tor of the School of Ac­count­ing and Man­age­ment (SAM) Dr Nigel Fulchan de­scribed the pan­dem­ic to the SBG as the “pre­fect storm” that caused a de­crease in stu­dent en­rol­ment – which meant low­er rev­enues for the school.

Fulchan said: “In the mid­dle of re­cruit­ing stu­dents the coun­try was go­ing through an elec­tion cam­paign, then a bud­get, the de­lay and even­tu­al un­cer­tain­ty of CXC re­sults and of course in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic all con­tributed to low­er than av­er­age stu­dent en­rol­ment.”

In spite of this, Fulchan said that the board of SAM made a de­ci­sion to keep the salaries of staff dur­ing the cur­rent pe­ri­od at the same lev­els. He added that the im­pend­ing re­duc­tion in GATE fund­ing now gives in­sti­tu­tions an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete not on price but on qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion and ser­vice.

In or­der to piv­ot dur­ing this time as a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion, CTSCB­SC ED Ra­goonath dis­closed that the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s ag­ile busi­ness struc­ture al­lowed it to seize op­por­tu­ni­ties to of­fer pri­ma­ry school and sec­ondary school cours­es. It has al­so at­tract­ed stu­dents from To­ba­go and rur­al ar­eas for its ter­tiary lev­el of­fer­ings.

Maraj ex­pressed to the SBG that SBCS GLI will be re­duc­ing its course of­fer­ing to com­pete with on­ly cours­es that will be able to pro­vide stu­dents with a com­pet­i­tive edge in get­ting a job. He ar­gued that while many in­sti­tu­tions of­fer cours­es that are good, they may not trans­late in­to job pos­ses­sion in this in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket.

Read the original article here