FALLOONFACED WITH financial contraints and inadequate facilities to accommodate the number of applicants seeking to pursue some of its programmes, the University of the West Indies (UWI) has moved to expand its distance teaching offerings, make greater use of information technology and work more collaboratively with other tertiary level institutions.
"Certainly there is a demand for entry which we are not meeting in that there are far more qualified applicants than we are able to accept," campus registrar Tony Falloon told The Sunday Gleaner in an interview.
Mr. Falloon said that because of the contraints, the projected rate of expansion in student enrolment for the period 2002/2003 to 2006/2007 was a modest 2.2 per cent per annum."
He pointed out however, that that the UWI had already exceeded its target for the first year of the plan by some 270 students.
The Principal's Report for the 2000-2001 academic year noted a slight decline in enrolment in the Faculty of Social Sciences, which was attributed to "an attempt by the Faculty to restrain enrolment at the undergraduate level as its human resources and physical facilities were stretched to the limit."
ONGOING PROGRAMME
Campus bursar, Elaine Robinson, said that while the institution had an ongoing programme as it relates to fund-raising, greater emphasis was now being placed on increasing access through technology (on-line and distance education) and "allowing some tertiary level institutions to take on some elements of our programmes".
The Strategic Plan includes a target annual growth of 3.6 per cent increasing the on-campus student load by approximately 3,900, as well as expanding distance education enrolment by 5,000 students to facilitate wider regional access to higher education.
There is a provision to also "engage the School of Continuing Studies in the expansion and variation of opportunities for access to tertiary education with due consideration of the demand in each country .."
In addition there were proposals to expand postgraduate programmes, and increase the proportion of fulltime postgraduate students.
This year the university made offers for fulltime studies to 2,785 applicants across the faculties of the Humanities, Pure and Applied Sciences and Social Sciences. Of this number 1,667 or more than half of the total number of persons accepted entry offers.
A further 1,039 part-time offers were made to applicants across the three faculties. Of this 700 persons accepted.
But there were concerns too about the numbers of qualified students who were not taking up offers of entry to university.
This year, 5,076 qualified applicants across all faculties were identified. Of this number 3,870 were sent offer letters but only 2,130 followed through to register for the programmes.
