Professor Alvin Wint - Contributed

OCHO RIOS, St Ann:

Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Professor Alvin Wint, has made a raft of recommendations to affect the financing of tertiary education in the region.

Speaking at a Jamaica Teachers' Association conference, the professor said that loans should be priced to students at about the Government's borrowing rate, as there was no reason for the society to subsidise high-income graduates. He said too that the loan-repayment period should be extended to a maximum 20 years.

Wint suggested that guarantors should be used as a tracking device but that no means test should be imposed; loan repayment should be tied to income tax and withheld at source where possible.

The UWI professor said that work should begin towards the urgent establishment of credit bureaus within the countries of the region to facilitate repayment by graduates who have emigrated.

Loan schemes

"Introduce within the region income-contingent loan schemes that cover realistic living costs and the payment of tuition fees more nearly approximate to the private benefit tertiary students receive in order to improve both the access and equity of the tertiary system," Wint stated.

According to him, the current financing system is socially inequitable, while it denies, in the case of countries charging tuition, access to the lowest income students.

Speaking on the topic 'Financing tertiary education in the Anglophone Caribbean: the role of students loan systems', Wint made the recommendations based on concerns of the region. These concerns include, among other things, raising the level of the tertiary education, the shifting to a knowledge-based service economy and the enhancing of the technical capacity of the public and private sectors.

In comparing the interest rates and time repayment period for loans to tertiary institutions in the Caribbean, it was noted that Jamaica had the highest interest rate, a maximum 16 per cent, followed by the Eastern Caribbean at a maximum 15 per cent, Barbados, six per cent and Trinidad and Tobago, 4.5 per cent.