A conference of ACHEA (Association of Caribbean Higher Education Administrators) will be held in Tobago from July 6 to 9, 2005 at the Tobago Hilton. Two years ago a similar conference was held in Montego Bay, Jamaica and Campus Principal Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie was the feature speaker. His address, still timely, is printed below. Several of the ideas and recommendations contained in this paper have been incorporated in the work of a University committee chaired by Cave Hill Campus Principal Professor Hilary Beckles which reported to University Council in April. The report was entitled: The Report of the Task Force on the Liberalization of Higher Education and its Impact on the University of the West Indies and Tertiary Education in the Region. Dr. Tewarie was also a member of this committee and Secretary to the committee was Cecile Clayton of the Mona Campus. One of the driving forces behind the ACHEA conference is University Registrar Gloria Barrett-Sobers.

This is my perspective on the challenges for Higher Educational Institution in the age of globalization. From my point of view we need transformation at the institutional level; rationalization, transformation and integration of the higher education sector across the region; and an integrated development policy and strategy to develop and sustain a knowledge sector; which policy and strategy should determine our approach to multi lateral and international negotiations as one region on education services and all knowledge services generally.

I will be taking three clear positions in this paper:

1. We need to transform Higher Education institutions;
2. We need to rationalize, transform and integrate the entire Higher Education and the tertiary sector regionally;
3. We need to refashion the region’s approach to external relations and regional development

First of all, globalization has made elitist University education an anachronism and has made mass University education a necessity. This is the information age of “Education for all” according to the United Nations, and even if the principal focus of that thrust is education at primary and secondary level for all, that in itself will lead to the expansion of Higher Education in countries where high school education becomes widespread. Many developed countries are pursuing targets upwards of 50 percent in terms of tertiary participation. In our region, CARICOM Heads have set a modest target of 15% by 2005. We will however not achieve that target in the stipulated time. Even so, we are currently pursuing that target via a strategy of establishing or expanding community colleges and national universities to complement the output of the University of the West Indies which traditionally limited its intake to only the very best performing students. Within recent times however the University of the West Indies has been increasing enrolment dramatically and over the last three years it has virtually doubled intake. So the strategy of expansion of access is being vigorously pursued but mass education at the tertiary level will require expansion of UWI, yes, but expansion of the entire tertiary system as well. And there are significant implications.

First of all major expansion at the University of the West Indies cannot be achieved without an increase in teaching and learning spaces (mostly classrooms of various sizes and laboratories) and without an increase in the number of Faculty as well as supporting infrastructure human, organizational and physical. Even if curriculum is rationalized along with timetabling to optimize available space, the recurrent costs to support expansion will increase, and capital projects involving, classrooms, labs, office space, student housing will demand funding not readily available from governments in the region.

Secondly, investment in community colleges and national Universities by various countries, coming from the same national pool of funds allocated for tertiary education, is likely to affect the proportion of funds available to the University of the West Indies. Unless governments of the region make a long-term commitment to the University of the West Indies as well as a clear, long-term commitment to tertiary expansion via institutions other than the University of the West Indies as part of a commitment to a strategic human development thrust then tensions over funding and economic challenges to growth and expansion are likely to recur year after year. And unless there is some transparent, mutually agreed upon basis for funding we may well end up with an unhealthy state of affairs.

What is more, the pressure on the University of the West Indies to secure funding from sources outside of government will increase. Yet at the same time, newer institutions coming on stream or recently established ones will also seek to tap into sources of non-governmental funding. This is likely to intensify the competition for private sector funding across the region as well and this will put additional pressure both on the Private Sector as well as on individual institutions.

The funding situation is likely to be exacerbated by another phenomenon. The dichotomy between research and teaching is likely to increase as the current environment of Higher Education evolves. The emphasis on tertiary expansion is currently focused on intake and access and is certain to shift to throughput and outcome before long. But the emphasis is on an increased number being trained or educated at the post secondary level resulting in technical/vocational qualifications, Associate degrees and Bachelor’s degrees.

As the pool of graduates from the tertiary system grows, the need for the expansion of postgraduate education will also grow as will the need to build up research capacity involving faculty numbers and students studying for research based degrees. Governments in the region, traditionally fund institutions on the basis of enrolment and as a result government funding is focused on teaching those students who are enrolled and on seeing them through to graduation. Government rarely provides funding for research. Research institutions such as the University of the West Indies are likely to suffer in such an arrangement.

It is essential, therefore, that the issue of Research Funding be put on the regional and national agendas even as the University of the West Indies seeks to attract international funding for research projects. It is important that the funding bases for Research and Teaching be separate and distinct from each other so that Research institutions increase their wherewithal to pursue a research agenda meaningfully.

The issue of how we continue to fund institutions to meet our human resource needs as well as our need for research to support the development process is something to which we will have to focus a great deal of attention.

With the movement away from elite to mass education at the tertiary level and the need to engage research as a separate and distinct function of higher educational institutions for the purpose of funding, we need to once again ask the question: Education for what? Research for what?

The world has changed dramatically; globalization has connected the world as never before; market realities determine relevance and value and such changes have affected the reasoning behind the increased demand for higher education by students as well as their parents.

Students chose programmes at a tertiary institution or University in order to get a good job. The value of the programme is determined by how long it takes a graduate to get a good job. Employers assess the value of the graduate (and therefore the relevance of the education and degree) by how fast the graduate can hit the ground running. Such developments are bound to affect curriculum, teaching methodology, practical exposure and on-the-job experience via internships etc as well as the structure of delivery of courses. This poses a serious challenge to the notion of a strong liberal education. Yet there is one redeeming factor.

Employers and corporations faced with new challenges and problems to be solved everyday need clear thinkers and innovative solution providers and people generally who will come up with original ideas about how to do things better. So that there is a need as well to move teaching and learning away from information absorption and examination regurgitation to critical thinking, problem solving and creative interventions. This requires a retraining of all faculties in the tertiary sector to meet the challenge of new teaching and learning approaches required for the classroom as well as induction and orientation programmes for all incoming faculty.

It is important to understand how imperative such a transformation of their approach to teaching and learning is. Many of the foreign institutions and local private sector institutions which are engaged in education and training in the region offer their degrees in Business, Information Technology related or Management programmes. Such institutions have specialized in certain offerings and pride themselves on providing work-ready graduates who can apply what they have learnt to improve productivity and competitiveness in the job. If public tertiary institutions cannot match this to compete effectively with such institutions, their share of the market will dwindle along with their reputation only to be displaced by more business-like, corporate-oriented institutions.

Institutions such as the University of the West Indies may have to restructure to take into account programmes which require corporate customization and treat these in a special way making the stakeholders partners in the enterprise. This has been done for instance at the St. Augustine campus with the Petroleum Geoscience BSc programme as well as the BSc programme in Banking and Finance. The University as a whole has created a model in the areas of business and management through the Institute of Business (IOB) in Mona and St. Augustine and the CMD in Cave Hill. But some additional restructuring and adjustments of approach might be in order in other areas. In such developments at least three key issues will be at play: how to look after the best interest of the student; how to best satisfy the requirements of corporate stakeholders and finally how to ensure academic integrity and independence.

Another major challenge to which higher educational institutions need to respond in the region is the challenge of technology. Technology is perhaps the key driver of the globalization process and the technology of communications is vital to the response of higher educational institutions in the region to the globalization process.

The concept of e-learning has been one of the features of the Globalization discussion that has elicited excitement. Hand in hand with the e-learning concept has been the idea of the virtual university. Perhaps these two concepts have been most effectively captured by Phoenix University, a private, for profit institution which according to year 2000 estimates generates 12.8 million US dollars from on line and distance learning courses from students all over the world. This is the extreme case. However, most universities offer on line courses or web-based courses in some form or fashion.

The value of e-learning programmes is that they offer the greatest convenience to the student. The student can study anywhere, all he or she has to do is determine the most convenient time. Therefore e-learning programmes offer the ultimate in convenience and flexibility for the student. As access to computers becomes more widespread in the society and children grow up with computers at home or in primary and secondary schools, the market for e-learning will expand. And even if e-learning strategies are supplemented by face-to-face arrangements it can still become the dominant mode of accessing education in the future. The Higher educational institutions in the region cannot surrender this opportunity to institutions from outside the region. They must develop capacity and reach of their own. Developing such capacity and reach presents a major challenge.

Such an opportunity will be made available by the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN), a project being funded by the World Bank and the European Union recently launched at the Heads of Government Conference in Grenada with full support of the CARICOM Secretariat and the Heads.

The CKLN will connect all the countries of CARIFORUM by satellite and provide infrastructure for tertiary level institutions to deliver their programmes over an e-learning network. The CKLN will therefore make it possible for those regional institutions which are ready to go virtual to do so and it will allow higher educational institutions to exist virtually in cyberspace and physically on their campuses. However, institutions outside of the region will also have access to this network, while Caribbean institutions will also through this network have access to a global market. The issue is whether we will be ready; whether we will effectively be in a position to lead in our regional market and to simultaneously take advantage of the global opportunities. This will require a certain level of cooperation among higher educational institutions in the region even while they compete for market share within and outside the region. Whether or not we can develop the kind of maturity required to cooperate and compete at the same time within the context of big picture objectives for the human development thrust in the region is something that is left to be seen.

The four major challenges which I have so far identified which higher educational institutions must overcome under conditions of a technologically-driven, intensifying globalization therefore are sufficient funding to support expansion of access; transforming curriculum, teaching and learning methodology, and the structure of programmes to respond a more meaningfully to corporate demands and corresponding student and parent demands in the market; going virtual in order to capitalize on technology to satisfy regional demand and to tap into a global market and creating the conditions for the distinction to be made between funding for research and funding for teaching.

In 2003, when the Revised Sangster – Bethel Regional Qualification framework was used to assess programmes in Engineering, teacher education, tourism, agriculture and pharmacy among others, the results in this exercise conducted on behalf of CARICOM, were quite unfavourable.

The results revealed that training programmes were not uniform or consistent across disciplines; that curricula had not been designed to produce skills in the areas of greatest need and that there were even inconsistencies with regard to nomenclature within the same discipline. What such results tell us is that the Tertiary Sector within the CARICOM region is replete with deficiencies and consequently inadequate to the current demands of regional development.

Clearly therefore, we need to look inward first to clinically assess what transformation needs to take place within the sector at University level as well as across the tertiary sector so that we could respond more meaningfully to what the market is demanding as globalization proceeds apace. But we also need to be very clear about the implications of what internal transformation of the sector would mean.

Four of the major constraints to development in the Caribbean region are the scarcity of finance, limits to capacity, a gap in technology between us and the more developed world, and comparatively low productivity which affects our ability to compete in the global economy. Ironically, competitiveness depends heavily on the effectiveness of businesses and related institutions; the effectiveness of these institutions depend on the quality of human resources, and how strategically they are deployed to support the productive process; institutional capacity is built up by a combination of human resources and technology; human resource development and technological know-how are strengthened in a learning environment. To create learning environments to enhance competitiveness and build up productivity, finance is required to build up capacity and infrastructure in educational institutions.

The truly major challenge, therefore, is to finance the institutional capacity gap in the entire tertiary sector in the region to match the numbers that the tertiary sector musts absorb over the next decade or to allow these islands to compete in the world and secure a decent standard of living for our people in the region.

There are only three places on the supply side that such investment can come from: from government; from local investors or from foreign investors.

Perhaps the governments of the region can reasonably support a 15% participation rate by 2007 with a 1% increase every year thereafter. But how long will it take to achieve the participation rate of UK, USA, Singapore, Finland, and Iceland? And does is make sense to limit investment in tertiary education to the state sector when private investment can increase both intake and throughput and accelerate the developmental agenda? And if investment does not flow fast enough to meet the demand, does it not make sense to purchase from abroad what you are unable to produce at home?

That is the dilemma which developing countries face in this era of liberalization of trade in higher educational services which is fully sanctioned by the World Trade Organization (WTO) which makes the rules for trade of all goods and services. And these new rules of trade in educational services are part and parcel of the globalization process.

WTO sees the export of education from developed countries to developing countries as a public good since from their point of view national and regional institutions cannot meet the demand. From this perspective, foreign providers are seen as supplementing local capacity in expanding access and opportunity whether they invest and set up shop in the country to which they export the services, whether they engage in joint venture relationships or whether they simply provide services by distance modes.

The question that is sometimes posed by developing countries on this issue is this: “Is the export of education from OECD countries a lifeline to development or a hindrance to the development of national institutions? And the pertinent question for all of us is whether the development of national and regional institutions is compatible with an international sector in education? While one may argue in the regional context that national needs should not undermine regional commitments just so it can be argued that liberalization should not undermine efforts nationally or regionally to develop indigenous institutions and local capacity.

And that is the major challenge which we are going to have to resolve in the future. And from the rate at which the future is coming at us, the future is not very far away. Indeed, decision-making time for that future is now.

What the Caribbean region needs is a clear integrated policy framework for higher education in the region and an equally clear strategy for execution. This is not an easy thing to achieve precisely because there is no established regional authority or governance system for the region that is capable of giving effect to policy and strategy. Even when policy decisions are taken at the level of Heads of Government in CARICOM individual sovereign states remain the executing agencies. Regional policy and strategy can only be executed if there is inter-governmental cooperation and acquiescence by national authorities.

And so the challenge is how do we formulate regional policy, craft a strategy and design and establish institutions to manage the effective execution of that strategy? As an answer to this challenge, I propose the following:

• Establish a target for tertiary participation region-wide within a realistic time frame.
• Let every country in the region establish a plan for the achievement of that target at national level.
• Let every country come to an agreement with the University of the West Indies on the number of students over the time period it wishes the University of the West Indies to accommodate on an annual basis with a broad identification of fields.
• Let every country determine its own capacity to educate its students based on stretching existing institutions.
• Determine if excess capacity exists in any country in the region in particular areas of regional demand e.g. Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Trinidad.
• Strengthen existing national capacity and improve standards.
• Make a realistic assessment of what additional capacity needs to be built nationally to meet targets and what it would cost.
• Link tertiary expansion to regional absorptive capacity economically and align programme offerings to market realities.
• Establish the Regional Accreditation Agency that has been under discussion for years, the three principal arms of which are (1) seamless system, (2) free movement of skill, (3) international recognition.
• Rationalize the tertiary sector in every country so that there are complimentary supplementary and feeder relationships based on sensible articulation arrangements.
• Rationalize the tertiary sector across the region so that there are feeder, complementary and supplementary relationships between national systems and the Regional University of the West Indies.
• Draw on UWI’s strengths and on the knowledge of UWI’s TLI unit to strengthen the regional system as a seamless, effectively articulated system.

• Let CARICOM take a united approach with regard to the Educational Services issue in for such as WTO.
• Harmonize policy region wide toward private sector participation in higher education.
• Rationalize policy region wide toward Foreign Investment in Higher Education.
• Let these decisions which will establish order, system, structure, framework and objectives for the meaningful functioning of the tertiary sector, influence our approach to negotiations on educational matters at the WTO.
• Align regional tertiary strategy with investment and diversification strategy for region in the context of the easy movement of skills.
• Determine whether the region wants to pursue a strategy of the Caribbean as a destination for the Cluster of Educational Services not just for development and social transformation but for export.
• If the answer to this is yes, then develop a strategy not just for education but for the development of a knowledge sector, strategically linked to the global knowledge system and fed by output from the Higher Education sector regionally.
• Develop the knowledge sector by investing heavily in indigenous capacity building and by supporting that sector to leverage knowledge resources globally at the institutional level while supporting the export thrust of those institutions which opt to move in that direction.

We have reached the point in the development of the region when a quantum leap is required for the West Indian nation to play a meaningful role in the global economy and system. To do this the multiple aspirations for national achievement, Caribbean solidarity and international recognition must be sensibly reconciled. Fragmentation, disorder and chaos now in an area as strategic as the knowledge sector can only have debilitating effects.

The establishment of a comprehensive regional system of articulation and accreditation built on solid national foundation is a necessity, given the explosion in the availability of private sector tertiary education, the free movement of professionals within the region under CSME, the liberalization of trade in services, the entry of off-shore TLIs, the alliances between local private TLIs and foreign universities, the implications of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) for tertiary education in the region and the WTO positions on intellectual properly.

The several gaps which exist between countries such as ours and countries which constitute the industrialized world in education access, levels of achievement, research capacity and output, in scientific exposure and know-how and even in technological literacy make a concerted, coordinated intervention in the knowledge sector of an urgent necessity. On the supply side the glaring major gap is in institutional capacity. On the output side the creation of intellectual property.

The creation of a high powered knowledge infrastructure across the region by investing in, strengthening, upgrading and expanding the Higher Education sector to support as enlightened human development strategy cannot be postponed. Indeed if our economies are to become competitive in the knowledge era under current conditions of globalization then we need to create a comprehensive knowledge system to support these economies.

There are decisive links between tertiary education expansion and output, absorptive capacity, creative capability, export growth, international trade, foreign investment, knowledge transfer, capture and diffusion, the emergence of entrepreneurial energy, new business creation and the development of patents and other forms of intellectual property.

Let me close by saying that the University of the West Indies is THE vital institution of the Caribbean region best poised to fuel the development of a comprehensive knowledge infrastructure to support the development of institutional and competitive capacity in the region. It is well poised to support and enhance the development of the rest of the higher education sector in research, in the development of teachers, the design of curriculum, innovation in teaching methodology and the creation of effective learning environments. The whole purpose for the existence of UWI is to build up the people of the region so that they can strengthen their institutions in their countries. The rationale being that stronger countries, more competitive national economies, make for a stronger Caribbean region in the global arena.