Last November UWI, no less, issued a release saying it was negotiating an agreement with the government here to train 20,000 Guyanese over the next five years through its Open Campus. The idea was to help advance Guyana’s human development strategy it was stated. This announcement came in a context where there had been no human resources survey, no discussion with stakeholders locally and no attempt to seek input from UG. Furthermore, a casual scan of the UWI Open Campus website did not give anyone confidence that it was going to transform the youth of this country, in addition to which there was not a great deal on offer which could not potentially be provided at Turkeyen.
Critics, of course, homed in on the ignoring of UG, more particularly when it has been grossly underfunded for so many decades, not to mention having been subject to political interference and sometimes eccentric restructuring. And now, the public was told, our educational resources were to be spent not on our own tertiary institution, but on the University of the West Indies. Substantive issues aside, the very least which could be said about this release is that it was a public relations disaster.
Nothing much more was heard about the proposal thereafter, but it seems that since then the pandemic has concentrated minds wonderfully at the Ministry of Education. They have recently announced a far more rational and comprehensive approach to online learning at the tertiary level. The idea is to enable students to access online programmes from six universities through the launch of the National Open Learning Institute at the end of this month. The fashioning of this institute is the work of Dr Jacob Opadeyi, a former Vice Chancellor at UG, who was also involved in last November’s plan. Minister Priya Manickchand was fervent in her praise of his work.
Director (pro tempore) Opadeyi was reported as saying that there will be an offer of 4,540 scholarship placements at universities such as the Indira Gandhi Open University, the Univer-sity of Applied Science in Germany, the Open University in the UK and, of course, the UWI Open Campus. Classes would begin in July. Arrangements are already in place with these institutions, while negotiations are being finalised with a further two relating to oil and gas sector courses.
He told this newspaper that the programmes themselves would not be confined to undergraduate certificates, but would also encompass Bachelor’s degrees, post-graduate diplomas and Master’s degrees.
While this is altogether a more viable programme than its limited predecessor, critics can still say the decision on what scholarships to offer is not founded on any prior human resources survey. While no one will argue about oil and gas sector courses, one has to presume that everything else has just been decided by a closed circle either within the Ministry of Education, along with Dr Opadeyi and perhaps other officials in central government. However, their response this time around would presumably be that given the immediate needs of the society, the exigencies of the pandemic did not allow for preliminary fact-finding and analysis.
What does redeem the scheme somewhat in this regard is the fact that those who do not secure scholarships can still apply privately, and they no doubt will choose their own preferred courses, irrespective of the areas identified by government. This potentially could expand the variety of the total complement. What is a godsend for them is that they will be able to benefit from the volume discount which the government has negotiated, Dr Opadeyi citing the example of a degree programme offered at a negotiated price of US$1,000 which will be the same for those with scholarships and those without.
The University of Applied Science in Germany, he said, was offering an 80% discount on their courses, while there would be a 45% discount on tuition fees from UWI once they could ensure an enrolment of 150 students in the programme.
Online learning long antedates the appearance of Covid-19 in our communities, and US universities such as Arizona, Oregon, Florida and Colorado have been offering degree courses for a good time, while others have also made possible the pursuit of post-graduate qualifications as well. Britain’s Open University, for example, has been functioning since 1969, and is the largest academic institution in the UK. Guyana’s new approach, therefore, is hardly a novelty in terms of the academic world at large.
What the Director of the National Open Learning Institute did say, however, was that his negotiations in relation to online tertiary education had come partly in response to the travel restrictions created as a consequence of the pandemic, but that they were making a distinction between programmes designed to be completed online as against those which were being administered online as a consequence of Covid-19. What the difference would be in practice was perhaps not altogether clear.
What he said next, however, is something which no one will dispute: “[I]t is going to radically change Guyana’s education landscape because we are looking at people in Region 1, Region 8 or Region 9 being able to study without leaving their home or workplace. We are looking at people who are in Georgetown, such as police officers or immigration complete their programme wherever they are.”
Which brings us back to UG and how it is accommodated within this new tertiary dispensation. On the announcement by UWI last November, Tur-keyen was suitably affronted. In a release it said, “The national University has not ceded its mandate and responsibilities and UG is now offering more than 1000 courses online as part of `The University of Guyana Blueprint 2040’ strategy framework.”
However, Minister Manickchand told this newspaper recently that the new programmes were a direct response to needs. And while the Ministry was working with both UG and the Cyril Potter College of Education to put their programmes online, they still would not have the capacity to cater for the large enrolment being contemplated. “How many students can I enrol at UG and CPCE right now? I need hundreds of teachers right now,” she said.
She cannot be gainsaid where that is concerned. Online courses are arguably not the major issue at the local university in any case; it is rehabilitating it with a major infusion of funding in the first instance which is. And there are areas where the government should be investing very substantially in Turkeyen with a view to building up a world-class capacity in a given field. One which comes immediately to mind is the environment and associated matters, given our forest, the existence of Iwokrama, our unique and diverse flora and fauna, and so on. Ninety per cent of us live precariously along a littoral much of which as things stand is below high-tide level, and academically speaking we should have more than a passing interest in climate change, and its impact on the coastal societies of the Caribbean.
Online learning will, as Dr Opadeyi says, change the education landscape. Independently of that UG still needs to be rescued, and it is incumbent on the Ministry to open up discussions with the authorities there, as well as the wider society in relation to how that is to be done, and how Turkeyen will take its place within the new landscape.
