(Jamaica Gleaner) Professor Archibald McDonald, incoming principal of the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, said the institution, over the years, has not been as integral to the Caribbean’s and, in particular, Jamaica’s development as it should be.
However, McDonald said going forward, he would be striving to balance the university’s research and its tangible impact on national development.
“We are now being criticised for not making a more direct contribution to the development of Jamaica and that will now be our main focus,” McDonald told The Gleaner in an interview last week.
He said the issue is not that the university has failed to research, but that it has found it hard to market the findings of the research it has done.
“The reality is that we need to do more in that area. So what we will be doing is to expand the office on the campus called the Office of Sponsored Research and what we will do is to change the nature of this (office),” he noted.
He said the office will be geared towards finding out what are the areas of weakness in the country and gear its research towards helping the Government in these areas.
As it relates to the country’s economic development, McDonald said more needs to be done to help in securing the country’s economic stability.
“If you think about it, why is it that for the past 20 years we have only grown by less than one per cent, and where are my colleagues in the Faculty of Social Sciences in all of this?” McDonald queried.
He added: “I don’t believe we have done enough and I know that many of my colleagues will disagree, but that is my view.”
Jamaica’s economy has long suffered from low growth and high debt. During the 15 years prior to the world financial crisis and recession, 1993-2007, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged just 1.1 per cent per year. GDP per capita grew at an average of 0.4 per cent per year during the same period, while the debt-to-GDP ratio has been over 100 per cent in each year since 2001.
McDonald, who will take over the leadership of the university in September, said his predecessor, Gordon Shirley, has already laid the groundwork for several changes to be made and the conversation on how the university will offer its services in the economic sector is ongoing.
“We certainly need to be doing the kind of research that can provide the Government with not just theoretical solutions but also practical solutions,” McDonald said.
