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Apr 09, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
It would surprise you how modern and forward- thinking the colonial authorities were when it came to education. One area in which they are far ahead of the present PPPC regime is the manner in which they rewarded the country’s top students.
Before independence, there was the Crown Colony Scholarship, the symbol of academic excellence. This allowed students to study in a country of their choice and in a field of their choice.
At Independence, this scholarship was replaced by the coveted Guyana Scholarship. Under this scheme, the country’s top performers (not just top performer) were afforded the opportunity to study at foreign universities of their choice.
Affordability was never a concern. It is true that the PNC government sent Guyana Scholars to study at universities of their choice. But it is also true that it was the PNC that was forced to abandon many of these students when the foreign exchange crisis hit. The PNC left many of these students high and dry because despite the country being awash with local dollars, there was an acute scarcity of foreign exchange.
As such the country could not find the foreign exchange to pay for the many students who were studying abroad. Not just the Guyana Scholars were affected. Many other government scholarship beneficiaries were forced to terminate their foreign studies or find a way to pay their own way. It was never a question of affordability. It was always a question then of not having foreign exchange.
As a result of this development, the PNC was forced to downgrade the Guyana Scholarship. It decided that the scholarship was only tenable at the University of Guyana. This destroyed the standing of the Guyana Scholarship. Very few of the country’s top scholars took it up and the scholarship disappeared completely. Rather than allowing the country to retain its trained and skilled scholars, having the Guyana Scholarship tenable at the University of Guyana had the opposite effect. The top students did not take up the scholarship. They migrated. As a result of this disinterest, the Guyana Scholarship disappeared all together.
This was quite unlike other countries in the Caribbean, such as Trinidad, which continued the time-honoured and wise tradition of offering to its students places at universities of their choice and in their own chosen fields. Trinidad rebranded its scholarships as the President’s Scholarships, in accordance with the prestige and importance it wished to accord to the prize.
It was only recently, under President Donald Ramotar, that the Guyana Scholarship was reintroduced.
Like the equivalent in Trinidad it was re-titled the President’s Scholarship.
By its recent decision to offer to the country’s top CSEC student a scholarship tenable in Guyana, China and Cuba and in only three areas of study, the Public Service Ministry has effectively downgraded the scholarship. It has recycled gifts from Cuba and China and passed this off as the President’s Scholarship. Cuba and China offers free scholarships to Guyana. It is disingenuous for the Guyana Government to take this freeness and re-brand it as the President’s Scholarship.
This change in policy cannot be justified. There is no issue with cost. There is no issue with affordability. There can be no issue also with foreign exchange. After all, if indeed there has been the progress that the PPPC boasts about there can be no issue with affordability. After contending that it has reversed the economic crisis that the PNC left this nation in, it is retrograde for the PPP to downgrade a scholarship issued in the name of its President.
If you do a basic calculation and take the most costly university, you will find that on a per capita basis it will not cost more than US$1 per citizen for a one-off payment. This is not a pension that is being paid. Most scholarships run for a few years and then ends, unlike pensions which have to be continuously paid until the beneficiary died.
If after all the progress the PPPC likes to boast about it should now contend that affordability is an issue, then the PPPC should not boast about its economic progress and about restoring the viability of Guyana’s finances. Affordability cannot be the issue. In fact, as suggested, if Guyana is serious about preserving a system of meritocracy and distributive justice; if Guyana is serious about retaining its best brains and training them for the sort of future that the PPPC says it has in store for the country, then the issue is not whether we can afford to send our top students to study overseas but whether we can afford NOT to do so.
( To be continued)
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