Donna P. Hope, Contributor
Jamaicans waiting for visa interviews at the British embassy in Kingston. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
I READ with great interest an article by a frustrated medical intern in last Sunday's Gleaner which outlined in great detail some of the glaring needs at the Kingston Public Hospital. What struck me as most interesting, however, was the final decision intimated both in the body of the letter and in the signature phrase.
This junior medical doctor is tired of the situation and leaving for greener pastures economically and otherwise. The frustration of many of our educated young and not-so-young professionals with the paltry terrain of employment and opportunities for personal growth and development has occasioned what we now identify as another wave of the dreaded 'brain drain' phenomenon that decimates the ranks of our best trained and brightest minds, particularly in the prime of their productive years. It is disheartening to see another apparently young and bright individual opt to leave our country at this time.
Nevertheless, I am also heartily fatigued by the propensity of so many of our more privileged young people to complain and cop out in the face of the stark inequalities and harsh poverty that characterises our society. We are still a Third World society struggling to overcome and compensate for the often unwise political and economic decisions of many of our former and current leaders. It is only too clear that our society is in no way comparable to the highly developed economies of countries like the United States of America with which we are too often compared. I am heartily sick of this inequitable comparison with a state that has a history and politics dating back to the 18th century. It would do us well to remember that the United States declared its independence in 1776 when Jamaica was still a slave colony. Our promotion to similar status occurred only 43 years ago. By any stretch of the imagination, we are a relatively young nation and the teething pains will not disappear overnight.
HEFTY SUBSIDIES
Individuals in this country who benefit from tertiary education at our universities, teacher's colleges and community colleges usually do so with the benefit of hefty subsidies that are brokered on the taxes of the working class of this country. All Jamaican students who matriculate to the University of the West Indies qualify as 'sponsored students from contributing countries'. This means that all such students automatically receive what is a 'government award/scholarship equivalent to approximately 80 per cent of the economic cost or total cost of their programme'. In other words, these students from countries like Jamaica pay only about 20 per cent or one-fifth of the total cost of their tuition fees during their tenure at the University of the West Indies. Now, what this essentially means is that a portion of the taxes of the average working class person, (for e.g. a factory worker, security guard, clerk, cane cutter) in Jamaica goes towards subsidising nearly the entire cost of the university education of lawyers, medical doctors and other high status generating careers.
The most recent schedule of fees at the University of the West Indies shows that Jamaican students who study full time for a medical degree (pre-clinical and clinical) will pay the following fees:
Pre-Clinical: $208,813.00 out of a total of $934,852.00 for full time tuition. The government/citizens of Jamaica subsidise $726,039.00 of that amount.
Clinical: $397,824.00 out of a total of $2,152,576.00 for full time tuition. The government/citizens of Jamaica will subsidise $1,754,752.00 of that amount.
Jamaican students who study for a law degree will pay $134,020.00 out of a total of $612,290.00 for full time tuition. The government/citizens of Jamaica will subsidise $478,270.00 of that amount.
Jamaican students who pursue degrees in the faculties of social sciences; humanities and education; or pure and applied sciences will pay $123,156.00 out of a total of $615,780.00 for full time tuition. The government/citizens of Jamaica will subsidise $492,624.00 of that amount.
I believe the tuition subsidies were originally brokered with the intention that these privileged individuals, i.e. tertiary level graduates, would use their skills, training and expertise for and on behalf of the people of Jamaica, at least for even a few years after leaving the university. I also believe that in an earlier dispensation, individuals attended the university free of cost, with the government underwriting their entire tuition and other requisite fees with a similar expectation of students, upon completion of their tenure at the institution.
Cuba, as a socialist society and one of our closest neighbours, enjoys a first-class health-care system for several reasons. One of the most important of these reasons is the fact that its citizens who all benefit from FREE education through to the tertiary level must then work for and on behalf of the state. This means that the remuneration of a Cuban doctor is no more than the remuneration for a Cuban janitor. Under the principles of socialism, they each contribute in different ways towards the same ends the development of their society and they are each rewarded with the basic needs for their families' survival. As a pseudo-welfare Third World society our own subsidising of the education of many of our professionals draws ideas from this socialist model. Tertiary education is subsidised with positive expectations about the returns in the form of the subsequent contributions of graduates to the development of our struggling society.
LEGITIMATE FRUSTRATION
Yet, it is increasingly the norm for a growing majority of highly trained individuals to opt to leave Jamaica for greener pastures as soon as they acquire their University degrees. I am fully aware of the legitimate frustration that many graduates face when they are unable to find a job, any job, for too long a period of time. These are not the persons who give me cause for concern. There are others who feel cheated out of the lifestyles they imagine to be their birthright and immediately available at the end of their period of study including a brand new luxurious car, spanking apartment, and endless disposable income. The reality is that university graduates in many societies must first undergo a period of transition and economic planning before acquiring the expensive and often disposable symbols of material status. The luckier graduates have families who have some economic security and can, therefore, provide a foundation or buffer during this transitory period. For many in Jamaica this is not the norm. Many have to use students loans to underwrite their portion of the tuition and other costs for their tertiary education and enter the workforce already deep in the red and without the buffer of an economically secure family unit.
I strongly believe that the Ministry of Education should broker a period of bonding for all university graduates who benefit from this approximately 80 per cent scholarship/award that is funded by the taxpayers of this country, many of whom will never benefit from tertiary education. Where graduates of the university and related institutions opt to migrate before this period expires, they should be mandated to repay the tuition subsidy that they enjoyed for the period of their tenure as university undergraduate students (ranging from three-six years in some instances); or as a graduate student (ranging from two-eight years in some instances). Education is not a free good somebody always pays. And tertiary education cannot be free in a Third World, post-colonial, capitalist society.
For example, in the U.S., tuition costs for an undergraduate degree at a few selected universities for this academic year are as follows:
New York University (NYU) US$31,690 (J$1,964,000)
Howard University US$12,000 (J$744,000)
Harvard University US$32,097 (J$1,990,014)
It should be noted that an undergraduate or first degree from the University of the West Indies is highly recognised at international universities ivy league, public, private or otherwise in the USA, Canada, U.K., Japan, New Zealand and other parts of the world. Without a doubt, the programme of study at the University of the West Indies' three campuses stands up to the scrutiny of any international entity academic or professional. In short, the degrees bestowed by the UWI are not 'pyaa pyaa' qualifications on worthless paper. As a two-time graduate of the Mona Campus, with a background in the rural working classes of St. Catherine, I firmly believe that a subsidy of approximately 80 per cent of tuition fees is a benefit that is bestowed on the citizens of this country.
LEGACY OF WELFARISM
This benefit is a part of the
legacy of welfarism that continues to haunt us. This legacy of welfarism is selectively invoked at particular moments when many of our citizens wish to place their demands at the feet of that nebulous entity 'Govament'. It is clearly not invoked when 'poverty-stricken graduates' of the university and other tertiary level institutions choose to embellish their lives with the necessary markers of status respectability and mobility in Jamaica.
Perhaps the growing cadre of graduates from the UWI, teacher's colleges, nursing colleges, community colleges and other subsidised tertiary level institutions in Jamaica need to be reminded that the debt which they, of necessity, incur as a part of their course of study must be adequately repaid to their fellow citizens of this country preferably through service before they jump ship.
Donna P. Hope is a doctoral candidate in cultural studies at the George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. Email her at dhope@gmu.edu or dqueen13@hotmail.com
