Subsidised tertiary education is only a sub-set of the general dependency syndrome which has debilitated the nation over time.
There is undoubtedly a role for tertiary institutions in Jamaica (technical as well as universities), but, as the overall educational system comes under increasing pressure for funding, it is time to put ideology aside and debate pragmatically where best we should allocate our dwindling resources.
In making allocations, politicians are tempted to assign a little here and a little there in order to keep everybody happy but such a popularist approach usually ends up weakening the entire structure so that ultimately nobody really benefits and everybody becomes a victim of the emergency.
In the last budget some $19 billion or about 10.5 per cent of the Recurrent National Expenditure Budget (including debt servicing) was allocated to education.
Although the powers that be pay lip service to Early Childhood education, it ranked disastrously low at 4.5 per cent of the overall allocation compared with 18.3 per cent to tertiary education at the other end of the scale. The current "economic" cost of an education at the University of the West Indies on a "merged" faculty basis is about $510,000 per student and with students on average paying only 15 per cent of the "economic" cost of their education, subsidising tertiary education in Jamaica costs Government, (read "tax-payer") about $2.4 billion a year, while almost the entire costs of early childhood education is borne by private citizens at the lower end of the economic scale. This cannot be just. If the amount of subsidy for tertiary education was reduced to 50 per cent of economic cost, this would save some $900 million which could go immediately to a reformed early childhood education system.
Next week: Solving the teacher problem
Dr. Ralph Thompson, retired CEO of Seprod Limited, is a director of Musson (Jamaica) Ltd. with portfolio responsibility for The C. D. Alexander Company Realty Limited.
