BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, (CMC))
IN A move aimed at getting more men to pursue tertiary education, an official of the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus is suggesting the rolling out of undergraduate programmes which could be completed within 18 months.
In offering the proposal, Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal of the Cave Hill campus, Professor Hilary Beckles, said it may be necessary to go in this direction since boys considered three years too long a period to spend doing a degree programme and were generally rejecting education unless it was fast tracked.
"They boys are keen to go into degree programmes that have a potential for high earning and high status in a short time, so there isn't a male rejection of education," he told participants at a luncheon hosted by the Rotary Club of Barbados at the Hilton Hotel Thursday.
AREAS THAT ATTRACT BOYS
The principal said the evidence showed that boys were attracted to such areas as science, engineering, law, medicine and accounting. "There is a strong male interest in those professional degree programmes," he added.
Beckles said "there is no reason why a degree programme should take three years unless it was in a professional area like medicine" but programmes were presently structured on a traditional three-year model where there was only 50 per cent contact in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Cave Hill principal said the average student age at the Barbados campus was 26, with the typical student being a 26-year-old mother of one, allowing the Campus the opportunity to operate two degree models.
He said one model would allow teenagers to continue to operate on the traditional model to give them time to socialise while having a fast-track system for older students who would be allowed to take classes through the Easter, Summer and Christmas periods.
