By Sheria Brathwaite
The number of working people enrolled at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus has not recovered despite the reversal of the Freundel Stuart administration’s decision to stop paying tuition for Barbadians a decade ago, UWI Pro Vice-Chancellor Clive Landis reported on Friday.
Professor Landis, Cave Hill’s principal, said the campus is addressing several challenges facing it while pressing ahead with ideas to generate more income and become a symbol of Caribbean innovation – including a possible breakthrough health drink the UWI was working with the government to take to market here and abroad.
He highlighted the issues that affected the campus for the previous academic year, which ended on July 31, 2023, during the annual meeting of the University Council on Friday.
There has been a significant drop in mature students since 2014 when the previous administration decided to end a half-century policy of free university tuition when the campus opened in 1963.
Since the decision was reversed by the current administration in 2018, thousands of school leavers returned to the campus but mature students did not, Professor Landis told the council.
“We have lost professional development of a large part of the working population of Barbados, which is of great concern, and it was completely unanticipated and unexpected, and we have to make a collective effort to help bring these mature students and part-time students back to Cave Hill Campus,” he said. “We will adjust our programmes to make them more accessible, we will have more hybrid programmes. The private sector has to support students as they are in their career gaining more professional qualifications, support them to attend [classes and] give them time. There are also policy changes we are discussing with the government which I think will help as well but we need to address this issue as a country.”
In 2023, 6 223 students registered at the campus. Of them, 4 195, or 80 per cent, were aged 18 to 29; 578, or 11 per cent, were aged 30 to 39; 353 or seven per cent, were aged 40 to 49; and 129, or two per cent, were aged 50 to 59.
Professor Landis said that in the past, the age gap was not this wide.
The UWI also had an issue attracting men, he added, pointing out that across the university’s campuses, there was a ratio of two to three female students to one male at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
At Cave Hill, females outnumbered males three to one. Last year, 4 130 females (66 per cent) registered at Cave Hill while 2 085 (34 per cent) males applied for a course of study.
Noting that the university has been working to address this issue for a while, he said he was pleased to announce that the student body stepped up to take part in a recruitment drive in secondary schools to attract more males.
The principal said the university was looking at ways to attract more international students as well as collaborating with other tertiary institutions to offer joint programmes.
UWI has been trying to raise its international brand through diplomatic missions and contingents were sent to African nations such as Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, he said. It also wanted to establish an educational tourism policy with the Barbados government, said Professor Landis, adding that Cave Hill was planning to have talks with the Ministry of Tourism on setting up special arrangements for international students who studied here.
He said Cave Hill wanted to facilitate international students who wanted to work part-time or stay on the island after they completed their degree and work here.
On the topic of innovation, Cave Hill is on the verge of a breakthrough in terms of commercialising a branded diabetes-reversal shake, Professor Landis announced. The campus is working with Export Barbados and Invest Barbados to get the shake on supermarket shelves nationally and abroad, he revealed.
During his presentation, the campus principal also highlighted that several hundred students had requested counselling services in the past year. He said university researchers from Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad partnered with international collaborators to conduct a study on the pressures young people face.
What was interesting, he said, was that the research revealed that Caribbean youth were traumatised by the effects of climate change and their mental state was further impacted by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
