Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter

THE EXECUTIVE director of the Students' Loan Bureau (SLB) has said that the time has come for a more pointed approach to tertiary education.

Lenice Barnett told The Sunday Gleaner that there are some courses of work for which it appears that too many persons are being trained. She has advocated that a national study be done on the areas of need.

"Without a doubt, we need to revisit the courses that are being offered in our tertiary institutions. There should no longer be a blanket provision for anything you want to study," Barnett told The Sunday Gleaner.

Students' Loan Bureau figures indicate that the area of social sciences, in particular business and hospitality, accounts for a huge chunk of loan delinquents. No empirical work exists to indicate whether there is a correlation between student-loan delinquency and the job market.

Study needed

According to Barnett, there needs to be a study that looks at the market demand for certain jobs. She said tertiary institutions should use the findings to determine the courses offered and the number of persons admitted to those areas.

It is a view shared by Junior Rose, chairman of the Jamaica Association of Young Professionals. Rose told The Sunday Gleaner that the offering of courses at the tertiary level should be guided by a long-term development plan for the country.

"If the area of study is not as marketable, you may find that some persons, after graduating, are forced to settle for other jobs which sometimes do not pay them enough to honour their loan obligations and for them to survive through a month," Rose said.

According to him, it is important that the Planning Institute of Jamaica drive the process of forecasting the job market. He argued that there needs to be greater collaboration between the country's universities and secondary schools with a view to directing potential undergraduate students to more rewarding areas of study.

"We also need to look at the issue of flexi-time, which would not only improve efficiency, but would allow some of our young professionals greater room to work more than one job to meet their obligations," Rose said.

Not an end in itself

Meanwhile, Wayne Chen, president of the Jamaica Employers' Federation, has argued that graduates need to recognise that the attainment of a degree is not an end in itself.

"We find many graduates of our tertiary institutions come out with a sense of entitlement but without the skills and competencies and attitude to back it up.

"A big part of the problem is that somebody with a degree feels entitled to get more money. The degree is only saying that 'I have achieved this amount for studying'. It is what you produce in the market that is going to pay you," Chen said.

Tertiary students receive the biggest slice from the national budget towards their education yearly. This year, Government plans to spend an average of $562,918 on each student attending a tertiary institution, compared to $91,468 on a secondary student, $72,345 per primary-school student, and $24,411 for each basic-school student.

Top-five delinquent institutions