Dr Win­ford James

Must we keep pro­vid­ing full fund­ing for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion? Here’s one an­swer:

“One hun­dred per cent (100%) fund­ing for uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion has con­tributed to labour mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion, wage sup­pres­sion and grow­ing frus­tra­tion among high­ly qual­i­fied grad­u­ates who are un­able to se­cure mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment.

“I am not an ad­vo­cate for full fund­ing of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. Full fund­ing for ed­u­ca­tion should stop at sec­ondary school. At the ter­tiary lev­el, that is a choice, and in­di­vid­u­als should fund at least part of that cost.

“He warned that the cur­rent sys­tem is cre­at­ing a mis­match be­tween the skills pro­duced by uni­ver­si­ties and the ac­tu­al needs of the econ­o­my, while plac­ing an un­sus­tain­able bur­den on pub­lic fi­nances.

“He says the State should end full fi­nanc­ing of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, ar­gu­ing that pub­lic fund­ing should stop at sec­ondary school, as Trinidad and To­ba­go can no longer ab­sorb the num­ber of uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates be­ing pro­duced.

“Con­rad point­ed to cal­cu­lat­ed sec­toral sat­u­ra­tion rates which show that key in­dus­tries such as en­er­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing and trans­porta­tion are al­ready over­sup­plied with labour, lim­it­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for new grad­u­ates.”

The above state­ments were ei­ther re­port­ed by Ex­press re­porter Vis­han­na Pha­goo or cit­ed by her from the speech of UWI econ­o­mist Dr Daren Con­rad at a re­cent pan­el dis­cus­sion on The im­pact of back­pay promis­es on the macro-econ­o­my.

I am less than im­pressed by Con­rad’s pre­sen­ta­tion and will at­tempt to show why in this col­umn.

In essence, Con­rad is fo­cused on the “un­sus­tain­able bur­den on pub­lic fi­nances” im­posed by uni­ver­si­ties. He thinks that the State should “end full fi­nanc­ing of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion” and, con­tra­dic­to­ri­ly, posits that pub­lic spend­ing should “stop at sec­ondary school.” T&T “can no longer ab­sorb the num­ber of grad­u­ates be­ing pro­duced.” Ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion is not an en­ti­tle­ment, so to speak.

What are his ar­gu­ments?

As far as I can glean, they are 1) the mar­ket for ter­tiary grad­u­ates, in­clud­ing some with mas­ter’s de­grees, is sat­u­rat­ed, re­sult­ing in many of them forced to take jobs and salaries be­neath their qual­i­fi­ca­tions; and 2) key in­dus­tries such as en­er­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and trans­for­ma­tion are al­ready over­sup­plied.

The mar­ket does not have the ab­sorp­tive ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date ter­tiary grad­u­ates, Con­rad in­sists. What­ev­er ev­i­dence he has must be us­able to es­tab­lish that the coun­try has achieved a sat­is­fac­to­ry lev­el of de­vel­op­ment. He must es­tab­lish, for ex­am­ple, that there are no in­dus­tries with un­der­utilised po­ten­tial to ex­pand their ex­ports and help us get out of the en­er­gy sec­tor mess by us­ing more ter­tiary grad­u­ates.

How­ev­er, even if he does have the un­pro­duced ev­i­dence, his so­lu­tion, end­ing fund­ing for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, is close to be­ing damnable. It is tan­ta­mount to say­ing that end­ing post-sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion is a sound pol­i­cy that would help the coun­try achieve the eco­nom­ic fu­ture it wants. It is wide­ly agreed that the fu­ture is a de­vel­oped econ­o­my free from the trou­bles cre­at­ed by over re­liance on the en­er­gy sec­tor.

How do you de­vel­op a coun­try with such a pol­i­cy? How do you trun­cate a child’s ed­u­ca­tion and ex­pect the coun­try to de­vel­op? How do you di­ver­si­fy a coun­try’s econ­o­my when you in­ter­vene to stop the growth and de­vel­op­ment of knowl­edge­able and skilled grad­u­ates need­ed in the fu­ture? Does Con­rad know that his pro­pos­al is un­heard of in most coun­tries across the globe?

Does Con­rad know that in­ad­e­quate di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion re­mains with us 70 years af­ter we be­gan be­ing de­pen­dent on oil and gas? Does he know that a ma­jor rea­son for this is the un­der ed­u­ca­tion of the labour force—that is, the pauci­ty of the num­bers ed­u­cat­ed at the ter­tiary lev­el? Does he know that de­vel­oped coun­tries, like Fin­land, Hong Kong, and the Unit­ed States, have rates of em­ployed work­ers with ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in the 40s and 50s, but that Trinidad’s rate is some 16 per cent, and To­ba­go’s 13 per cent?

Does Con­rad ap­pre­ci­ate that when cer­tain sec­tors are over­sup­plied with un­der­e­d­u­cat­ed work­ers, it dri­ves the gen­er­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of labour and work­er in­comes down­wards?

If he knows and ap­pre­ci­ates these things, how could he seize on the one thing that would en­able us to di­ver­si­fy mean­ing­ful­ly— ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion? How would we have stu­dents in the right num­bers de­vel­op and pro­duce knowl­edge not on­ly for lo­cal con­sump­tion but al­so for ex­port, in ar­eas such as health­care, fi­nance, and the cre­ative arts? Should we now be­come heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on in­flows of for­eign work­ers with the re­quired ter­tiary qual­i­fi­ca­tions to pur­sue the na­tion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion agen­da? And, if full fund­ing is not the an­swer, sure­ly some ap­pro­pri­ate al­ter­na­tive should be cooked up to en­sure ad­e­quate sup­plies of nec­es­sary uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates.

The sav­ing grace for all of us in this mat­ter is that, if any gov­ern­ment dares to im­ple­ment Con­rad’s reck­less, un­con­scionable pro­pos­al, it would be shoot­ing it­self in the foot, as the peo­ple would be sure to rise up against it.

It is far bet­ter for Dr Con­rad to gath­er the right da­ta and per­form the kind of analy­sis that would in­form our path to re­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. I am com­fort­ed by the fact that he knows that up­dat­ed labour mar­ket da­ta is crit­i­cal to guide ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing de­ci­sions and to plan our work­force.

But un­less he can pro­vide com­pelling ev­i­dence to sup­port his sug­ges­tion, he must turn away from the idea that con­tin­u­ing pub­lic fund­ing to in­vest heav­i­ly in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion is a mis­take. It is the oth­er way around.

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try.