Martin Henry
'Students, new target for thieves', The Gleaner headline announced. School officials are expressing concern over recent attacks on students who are being targeted for their cellular phones and name brand school bags. Ironically, many parents have provided their children with cell phones as a keep-in-touch device for added security.
The story focused on off-campus crime against students on their way to and from school. On-campus, student-on-student crime has reached epidemic proportions. Much of it goes unreported. But anybody around children in school will know the horror stories. One child in a prominent, church-affiliated, traditional high school was robbed three times in his first two years. We are not talking about pilfering property left unattended. In each case the stolen item school bag, money and cell phone was taken by force. Reports to the school authorities only led to stories of similar incidents. No serious effort was made to find and punish the perpetrators. And there is the ever present threat of reprisal against a child who reports.
Theft of property is the least. There are far more stabbings and other woundings and gang rapes on school campuses than are reported. Just last week there was yet another incident of stabbing in one of the boys' schools. The attack was apparently in reprisal for an earlier incident in which the victim wounded someone else. No media report, and possibly no report to the police.
'Tax' rackets by extortioning gangs are thriving on school campuses. As in the wider society from which the art is learned, terror enforces silence. Schools are reluctant to report all but the most serious cases.
Children are cringing in fear. Students are forced into a number of protective responses. Defence posses are formed, certain areas of campuses have to be abandoned to the hooligan elements, weapons are carried for protection. There are children, girls in particular, who are terrified of using school bathrooms and going in ones and twos is foolhardy.
The other Education issue of the day is the financing of tertiary education. The issue is powering its way into public debate as it becomes increasingly obvious that the Government is too financially strapped to even pretend to continue current levels of support for the system. It should now be obvious to all, that cost-sharing is vital to the survival of the system.
TOUGH POLICY ISSUES
As Prime Minister Patterson 'recommits to education' again, he should seize the opportunity for the Government to sort out the tough policy issues. For one thing, it is time to regard education as an investment and not a social welfare entitlement. This would represent a substantial philosophical and political shift.
It would then follow that those who are best able to make a personal investment should do so. Having received up to 13 years of education, mostly at state expense, and on the verge of professional income-earning as returns from further education, the tertiary level student should be asked to make the heaviest personal investment proportionally in her own education.
There is a hue and cry from the articulate and politically powerful state tertiary sector for "maintaining the emphasis on tertiary education" and for not "undermining tertiary education" Spokespersons are cleverly managing not to see what is perched on their noses: Private, full-fee institutions can hardly meet the demands of the thousands turning to them for educational opportunity often after being denied entrance to the tax-supported institutions because of not meeting 'rigorous' matriculation requirements.
Anthony Woodburn, UWI student and President of the Young Economists Association, did nothing to advance his argument or to protect the credibility of his association when he asked, "Has anyone wondered why so many foreign universities are offering courses in Jamaica?"
The overseas universities are here because people are buying their courses, for good money, as a sound investment in their own future.
HARSH ECONOMIC TERMS
Three-quarters of all tertiary graduates are selling their skills abroad. In harsh economic terms, Jamaican higher education is quite simply an export commodity. It cannot be un-reasonable to ask students to pay for what amounts to ex-port certification. Or, should they choose to stay, a ticket to the best jobs in this weak economy.
Absolutely, the highest returns from educational investments come at the base level of universal literacy, literacy in the broadest sense. This is not Government propaganda; ask UNESCO and the World Bank. We are nowhere near achieving sensible universal literacy in Jamaica. Indeed under-funded schools at the base and middle of the education system seem to specialise in turning out semi-literates who will never set foot in any college unless heavily remediated at further great cost to the state.
The United States has built the most powerful higher education system in the world on the principle of the student pays. Several countries have been forced to re-consider their education welfare policy and are upping fees at tertiary level. Students in Trinidad and Tobago, with a campus of the UWI, must now meet 50 per cent of costs. The Tony Blair Government is raising fees and tempers in the UK. One wonders if the Patterson Government here will have the courage to do the tough but wise thing.
Loan support through mutually beneficial arrangements between lender and creditor can be set up, secured by and paid back from future income. No poor achiever needs be denied higher education. A system of scholarship support by the state with appropriate terms and conditions should see these guys through. The Government would gain the leverage of backing specific areas of national development through selective educational financing. There are, for example, too many economists and too few science teachers.
We could go further and get really radical -- and efficient: Adopt the policy of supporting students, not institutions, with the bulk of the higher education dollar. Beyond a base level subsidy, institutions should be forced to attract students and their dollars, personal and allocated from the public purse, on the strength of the costs-benefits of the programmes offered.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
