The 2008/9 Annual Report of the University of the West Indies St Augustine Campus reflects the disposition of an institution that is acutely aware of its responsibility to do much more than tutor and turn out accomplished academics.
In his review of the academic year the university’s Principal, Professor Clement Sankat alludes to the role of the university in “continuously nurturing our relationships with our host country and engaging in positive collaborations to deliver targeted programmes and technical advice to ministries and other public entities.” Professor Sankat goes on to refer to St Augustine’s “relationships with the private sector”, which he said, “are widening and deepening as we seek to ensure that our research is current, relevant and aligned with national and regional industry needs.”
The rest of the annual report contains several brief accounts of the kinds of public and private sector cooperation – inside and outside Trinidad and Tobago – to which Professor Sankat referred, reflecting the application of the institution’s pool of expertise in supporting socially and economically significant development projects in other Caribbean territories and providing technical support services for the domestic and regional private sectors.
The twofold significance of these pursuits reposes, first, in the success which St Augustine has recorded, first, in rendering itself relevant directly to furthering the developmental pursuits of the society which it serves and seeking to generate revenue with which to supplement its subvention from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. Interestingly, the efforts of the university to add a business dimension to its substantive academic preoccupation is driven by an aggressive branding and marketing initiative which, the annual report said, is aimed at “building the UWI brand and developing a more positive reputation”.
The returns from this approach have been modest but significant. During the 2008/9 academic year the university netted TT$9.8 million from projects that included consulting activities, research grants training and local and regional development. Additionally, the university is currently negotiating a number of proposals for other consultancies including one that envisages the creation of a healthcare service for mobile phone users in the region, another that envisages a collaborative initiative with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago Agri Business Association aimed at “improving the pepper yield through Heterosis Breeding” and a collaborative effort with UNHABITAT on “urban profiling in the Caribbean.” During the 2008/9 academic year St Augustine also had a proposal accepted by Microsoft for the university to conduct a survey on the use of refurbished computers and finalized a contract with the Environmental Management Authority in Trinidad and Tobago for a research project titled “environmentally sensitive species studies”. Again the significance of these various consultancy engagements reflects the extent of the multi-disciplinary contribution which St Augustine is making to development in Trinidad and Tobago and the rest of the region.
One notes too the university’s research pursuits in the economics of agriculture, specifically its interest in “the business and science elements” of farming. “Bio-business is the strategically viable and profitable way to develop agriculture,” St Augustine’s Professor of Genetics Pathmanathan Umaharan said.
The university’s focus on mainstream issues extends to its own revenue generation and cost-saving revenue interests and this is best reflected in its campus income statement for the year under review, which indicates that while it remains considerably dependent on government remittances more than 36 per cent of its funding during that year was derived from a combination of special projects funds, commercial operations and “other income”. It is a statement that paints a picture of a university that is clearly aspiring towards reducing its operational dependence on the state. And in the process it has clearly used just about every mechanism at its disposal to generate revenue, “from the collection of fines for (on campus) traffic offences or the return of library books to consultancy projects and concessionaire fees from the private businesses allowed to operate on the campus.”
No one expects, of course, that the University of Guyana, in its present state can match these accomplishments any time in the near future. It has to be said though that St Augustine’s accomplishments would have had to have been the outcome of deliberate planning designed – as Professor Sankat put it – “to create on the campus the conditions necessary for sustainable growth supported by a continuous commitment to quality and excellence.” It is, to put it bluntly, what every university, particularly those in poor countries where governments can ill-afford to underwrite the whole cost of running universities, must seek to do. As the experience of St Augustine so graphically illustrates, the outcomes usually go far beyond graduating successive waves of academics many of whom must either face the frustration of failure to find worthwhile employment, or else, seek their fortunes outside the countries in which they were trained.
