One small step for The University of the West Indies (UWI), a giant step for Antigua and Barbuda,” declared Sir Hilary Beckles, UWI’s Vice Chancellor, on Tuesday, speaking at the ceremonial opening of The Five Islands Campus. With landed campuses in Mona, Jamaica; St. Augustine, Trinidad; and Cave Hill, Barbados, the newest landed campus marks the first located in a member country of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).
The Five Islands Campus will open with three areas of specialization: the School of Health and Behavioural Sciences, the School of Management, Sciences and Technology, and the School of Humanities and Education. Professor Stafford A. Griffith has been appointed Interim Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Campus. He will serve until July 31, 2020.
Located in Antigua and Barbuda, the Campus will serve as a hub for the eleven members of the OECS. Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne described the day as a glorious one in the country’s history. Had the Campus not been established, he said, the nation would be deprived of the skilled and educated workforce it so desperately needs. Browne expressed confidence that the University will continue the enrichment of his countrymen, expand their knowledge and enhance their capacity, placing them on equal footing with the brightest in the world. He referenced Benjamin Franklin, who declared that an investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
“In today’s highly competitive global environment,” said the Prime Minister, “there is a direct correlation between education and economic growth and development. Countries that neglect education and that fail to develop their human resources are being left behind.”
He went on: “According to the World Bank, currently fewer than 15% of school leavers in the countries of the OECS enroll in a university. That is a statistic as shocking as it is alarming . . . If the countries of the OECS, including Antigua and Barbuda, fail to improve productivity and competitiveness, we will be left behind. Providing a university education is not a cheap undertaking, but ignorance is debilitatingly expensive.” Browne added that availability of a university education for everyone is an imperative.
For his part, Sir Hilary revealed that a fourth landed campus had been in the making a long time: “This is my 40th year of unbroken service to this university and I say this because we have always known that we had to bring a campus of our university into the OECS. We have just been waiting for one of our distinguished prime ministers to put up a hand and say ‘come hither’.”
Last October, during a visit to Saint Lucia, Sir Hilary told reporters that UWI had for twenty years been trying to persuade successive Saint Lucian governments to let it develop Sir Arthur Lewis Community College into a university college. SALCC would be partnered with the regional institution and make available to students a large number of UWI programmes.
Beckles revealed that the Antigua and Barbuda government stepped up and agreed to work with UWI in 2017. “They said, ‘Not only do we want to be a university college, we’re going to pull all of our community colleges together into one and make that one college a university, and grow it into a campus of UWI.’ ”
Talk of transitioning SALCC to a university college has been ongoing for eons. The topic was last addressed in the August 31 issue of the government’s bi-monthly publication Our Saint Lucia. Education Minister Gale Rigobert stated that over the last three months, an intense review of subject offerings was done to determine which courses are obsolete, which are to be kept on, and which new ones need to be introduced. A 2018-2023 Strategic Plan is “designed to enable the college to transition into a university college”.
It remains unclear if that transition will be done with UWI, another university or on its own. Former PS in the Ministry of Education, Dr. Didacus Jules, is sceptical of the last option; he believes the transition should be done with UWI. As he told the STAR last October: “Successive administrations have spoken about SALCC as a university by itself and I have consistently voiced my opposition to this. If we cannot sustain a community college, what kind of university are you talking about?” On Monday September 2 SALCC began another school year without a principal at the helm.
