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May 14, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
Hopes have been raised too many times that change is in the air for the University of Guyana. However, no substantive change is likely to emerge at the University of Guyana itself.
No change is likely to emerge because of policy reformation or changes in personnel on campus. The University of Guyana has gone down these roads before. Nothing has been altered.
It is presumed that the problem at the University of Guyana is finances. It has been said that if the financial situation at UG is fixed the problems there will be rectified.
While it is true that with financial resources a great deal more can be done, it will take much more than financial stability to fix the University of Guyana.
What the University of Guyana needs is a change of philosophy. By now it should have been recognized that there is a limit, a very low limit, to what the government can afford to spend on tertiary education relative to what is spends at other tiers of the educational system.
Too small a fraction of the population accesses tertiary education and this is compounded by the fact that the expenditure on a single campus is disproportionate when compared to the overall educational Budget.
In such a situation, something has to give. The only way that the University of Guyana is going to be able to raise the resources that are necessary to improve teaching and output is by moving progressively towards greater cost recovery.
The reality has to be faced that there are more important priorities in the educational system that demand just as much resources as the University of Guyana is gobbling up at the moment. Therefore the only solution would be for the University of Guyana to move in the direction of charging students fees which bear a closer resemblance to the cost of delivery.
And this is why there has to be a change of philosophy because whenever the need for greater resources is mentioned, all eyes turn towards the government and not towards the students. Well, that has to change and those students who believe that they will get a good quality education paying US$800 per year had better start thinking again.
With that sort of level of fees, the University of Guyana is always going to be dependent on the government, as was the case recently when it had to be bailed out from some expenses it had. The entire financing arrangement has to change with greater emphasis on cost recovery.
But this issue of cost recovery has been a political hot potato ever since Desmond Hoyte in 1991 indicated that cost recovery will have to be introduced at the University of Guyana. No government wants to deal with the political fallout of such a decision and therefore they keep postponing greater cost recovery at UG.
In the meantime, tuition is mainly being funded under an extremely generous student loan arrangement offered by the government. It is believed that more than 90 per cent of the students on campus have student loans. And it is known that some eighty per cent of those who graduate from the University of Guyana leave Guyana seeking greener pastures.
So what is the state of play as regards the repayment of these loans? Is the government being repaid for the billions of dollars in student loans that are taken each year? Or will this end up being like the Clico fiasco where the government spent hundreds of millions bailing out that defunct entity?
Given the multitude of reforms that are required to take place simultaneously, the only way for the University of Guyana to be revamped into a viable institution is for it to be closed down for two years while the reforms are set in motion. Without the closure for two years, the University of Guyana will limp from crisis to crisis and ultimately collapse.
The World Bank can put billions into improving the facilities at the University of Guyana. That is not going to help until such time as the University is put on a sustainable financial footing. And no such footing is possible until the issue of cost recovery is settled.
Settling this issue of cost recovery requires political will and no party wants to take the bull by the horn. No party wants to attract the political fallout that will come from having to ask students to pay much more. And so UG will continue in its ways and nothing will change from that end.
Change is however coming. It is coming through technology and when that change comes, the University of Guyana will be ill- prepared for it.
UG will be muscled out of its place of prominence as the country’s tertiary institution. Private universities are going to overrun the University of Guyana.
And all those students who like to complain that they cannot afford to pay the state-owned institution, will find the money to pay the private universities that will pop up offering the same programmes offered at Turkeyen.
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