UG students in pharmacy, optometry degree programmes still without loans as exams loom

Dear Editor,
As we enter the last month of the first semester of the University of Guyana 2010-2011 academic year, there are students who have faithfully attended classes, studied, written and passed class tests and now are worried since their efforts to excel in and secure a loan to cover the cost of tuition fees for their programmes may all be in vain.

The University of Guyana, this academic year, introduced three new programmes in the Faculty of Health Sciences: Degree in Pharmacy, Degree in Optometry and Degree in Rehabilitation Science. The latter is expected to be discontinued due to insufficient registrants. However, the other two have been fully supported.

The students who opted to pay their tuition fees, for the former two, through the Student Loan Agency were stunned when they found out that loans were not being offered for these new programmes. However, with the belief that it was a grave mistake and hope that the problem would soon be rectified they continued to attend their classes.

It is now one week before the final exams begins – final exams that only fully registered students can write – and more than 30 students sit and wonder if their hard work all semester will have to be wasted.

The University of Guyana Students’ Society, for the past three months, has been working tirelessly to rectify this issue. So as the representative of the students, we work towards fulfilling our aim “To attend to the welfare of any student of the university”. After staging two on-campus protests which have been to no avail, we have moved to publicly announce that the UGSS has a strong aversion to the current situation where loans are not being offered to students registered for new programmes – programmes which have been approved and added to the University’s curriculum.

The UGSS agrees fully with the increase in fees from $127,000 to $250,000 in order to upgrade facilities to accommodate a degree programme instead of an associate degree programme. However, a compromise should be made and the students be offered a loan to the tune of $127,000, as was previously offered for the associate degree, and the remainder be paid in cash by the student.

Yours faithfully,
Collin Constantine,
President and 19 others
University of Guyana
Students’ Society
Executive Council