Martin Henry

Today, Professor Errol Morrison, via the UWI and Blue Cross, officially assumes responsibilities as president of the University of Technology. It must be a rather inconvenient day for the new president.

Today also marks the start of the 13th Annual International Diabetes Conference in Montego Bay and Professor Morrison is one of the world's leading experts in diabetes.

Morrison's message for the conference, which led The Gleaner supplement on Monday, interestingly lists him as the Director of the University Diabetes Outreach Programme [UDOP]. There was a time when there would be no need to ask which university.

When a purely national university was begun to be created in 1995, it was designated a university of technology, the successor of a college of arts, science and technology.

What does that mean - to Government, public, and new president? An important sub-theme of the recent industrial action by academic staff at the institution, as I understand it, is this very question.

Concerns

The staff was not merely concerned about money but about the definition of their role and function and status. And the university administration, now headed by a UWI academic, understandably, has its concerns about academic staff performance in delivering value for money. Indeed, UTech is leading public agencies in creating a performance-based management system for all staff, which is part of the President Rae Davis legacy. And Davis, as first president, has left a comprehensive legacy, despite the many hiccups in a new university, which should be documented.

The fundamental distinctions between a college and a university are the offering of graduate degrees and the conduct of research by the latter. UTech has been too slow in these areas.

And it is not much use simply blaming the staff, or the administration for that matter. The university needs to now quickly find its own research foci, aggressively recruit high-performance students to feed a serious graduate programme and get on with the business of being a university.

The university has the largest pool of technological expertise assembled in any one place in the English-speaking Caribbean. Matching this as is where is expertise to the ocean of practical national problems swirling around the national technological university begging for research and consultancy solutions should be an exciting and productive challenge.

At the same time it must be noted that the Government has never made any significant drawdown on research and consultancy services from the University of Technology, preferring to look elsewhere including outside the country. And UTech has never seriously positioned itself to be so called upon.

The university is the beneficiary of a major academic assessment report from a team of eminent academic consultants which charts a sensible research and service pathway for a university of technology. My major quarrel with an otherwise excellent report is its recommendation which amounts to UTech shadowing and complementing the UWI.

We hope that the president from UWI does not lead in that direction. The national public university of technology should aggressively compete with everybody else for the brightest and the best, offer them a world class technological-professional education to graduate level and pull them into cutting-edge applied action research and problem-solving consultancy services with their professors.

Staff remuneration

Many countries have calculatedly used higher education in technological disciplines to help power their growth and development. Which is why academic staff remuneration, in absolute terms and comparatively, is not a light matter for UTech. It is a pathway to recruiting and retaining high calibre staff.

And it is time to think of a western and a central island university of technology. UTech cannot begin to cope with national demand and need for tech-prof education, much of which we know is for export. But export is not necessarily a bad thing. And there are attractive prospects of pulling many more overseas students here for quality education at lower costs. NCU does it.

UTech need not be 'the other university'. Morrison's task of helping the young institution become a powerhouse is cut out for him as his end of a career, pre-retirement hurrah. Let's wish him well - and demand much of him.