Panic. There could be a high drop out rate of university students come the start of the new semester in September.
This was the response yesterday of secretary of the Students’ Guild of the University of the West Indies’s St Augustine campus, Nicolai Edwards, to recommendations of a Cabinet-appointed task force mandated to investigate the Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses (GATE) programme.
“Thousands of tertiary level students have now entered panic mode, and rightfully so, due to the recommendations of the GATE task force,” Edwards said in a release after a media report highlighted the task force’s recommendations.
“The general feeling is that while the GATE programme has been due for a re-evaluation for some time now, the approach taken has been less than fair. The recommendations put forth by the task force, if implemented, will lead to a high dropout rate come September 2016, as students would not have been given sufficient time to prepare for the changes.”
Conceding there was undeniable wastage and breaches in the programme, Edwards said hardworking, dedicated and vulnerable students should not be disenfranchised as a result. He said any decision made by Cabinet concerning GATE should become effective September 2017 and students already enrolled in a GATE-funded programme should be able to complete their course of study “without the fear of having to pay their way.”
Edwards, who is currently attending a Commonwealth Youth Leadership Workshop in London, said he posted his response on social media and it was being widely accepted by young people.
“While we understand these are mere recommendations from the task force which can be accepted or denied by the Cabinet, it would be remiss of us as young people benefitting from GATE not to share our thoughts for the Government to also consider,” he said.
He claimed tertiary level students were not adequately represented on the task force and there was insufficient consultation with them. He said only one place on the 16-member task force was allocated a student representative, guild president Makesi Peters, who could not provide adequate representation since there was not enough consultation with the student body in T&T and across the region.
Guild president Peters could not be reached for a comment yesterday. But on the Students Guild Facebook page, there were mixed responses. Rosanna Lewis, commenting on the GATE affair, said some mitigation of senseless funding has to be done.
“Every campus now has a medical faculty and its own law faculty. Why would a country continue to fund your studies overseas when it is now being offered in Trinidad?” Lewis asked.
“Also, it is difficult to provide funding for students who cannot maintain a standard Grade Point Average and who continue to fail. Some mitigation has to be done to prevent this from happening and some repayment system has to be implemented.”
According to te media report, which carried part of the leaked task force report, undergraduates who previously got 100 per cent funding from the government, will now have to pay one-third of their tuition fees for their tertiary education, students over 50 will no longer qualify for assistance while those who want to pursue post graduate studies will get no funding this year. Further, tertiary education institutions that are non-credited will no longer be receiving funding and there will be a reintroduction of a means test from August 16 for only students 25 and under.
Garcia’s response
Education Minister Anthony Garcia said yesterday that he was very concerned about the leaking of the confidential report from the task force mandated to investigate the GATE programme. However, he called on tertiary level students not to panic, saying the recommendations are still under deliberation by Cabinet.
Contacted for a response to recommendations of major cuts in the programme, Garcia said he could not comment until Cabinet pronounces on them within the next two weeks.
However, he said, “This is supposed to be a document in the hands of Cabinet alone. I am becoming more and more concerned about leaks. I don’t know how it was leaked and who was behind it, but I will launch my own investigation when I go to my office Monday morning.”
Reminded of the Government’s earlier pronouncements about a review of GATE, he said, “Yes, we said we would review the programme. We recognised there was a lot of wastage in it.”
He said it was based on this and the declining state of the economy that Government decided to appoint a task force with a mandate to conduct a comprehensive review of the programme.