Georgetown: President David Granger has emphasised the pivotal role higher education plays in unshackling citizens from the various societal scourges and opening the door for opportunities to have access to a good life in the Region.
He was at the time addressing the audience at the Ceremonial Topping-Off and Deed Handover of the University of the West Indies (UWI) St Augustine South Campus Penal-Debe on Friday at the campus site in south Trinidad. According to the President, his Administration is committed to the objective of securing a good life for all. “This, I believe, can be achieved by removing what I refer to as the four horsemen of the Guyana apocalypse: crime, disease, ignorance and poverty… Investments in education, therefore, are investments in the good life. Higher education in the Caribbean must be reconfigured to support greater innovativeness in architecture, agriculture, culture, manufacturing, medicine, engineering, the sciences and business,” he stated.
President Granger noted that tertiary education should contribute to the competitiveness of enterprises and make the Caribbean a zone of prosperity. As such, he remarked that access to higher education would not only be resolved for “the elite”, but for all. The Head of State pointed out education was the vehicle to achieving a good life and the Caribbean has sufficient talent and resources to ensure a good life for its people.
He added, “We need not be poor; we need not be ignorant; we need not suffer from debilitating lifestyle diseases; we should not be victims of violent crime.” Granger highlighted that in the Region, tertiary education was at the centre of regional integration and human development. On this note, he outlined that Caribbean states and their people must cooperate with each other and not compete in order to achieve common goals.
Transformative education
“The Caribbean is a unique community. Our language, our location, our political culture and our diversity should be seen as assets, not liabilities. Higher education, in this context, must help the Caribbean people not merely to survive but to thrive in this place our fore-parents made their home. We must be able to look beyond our painful past, our differences, the distances across the sea and even our current condition. We must develop the capacity to conceptualise a collective future made possible by a transformative education system,” the President stated.
The Head of State went on to say that change was essential and inevitable; hence, he urged that the higher educational systems be reformed to produce graduates who have the knowledge and skills to allow the Region’s industries and businesses to compete globally. He implored Caribbean nationals and students to be innovative and focus on long-term value creation, not short-term profit-making.
According to Granger, despite being a region of small states with a population of just about five million, the Caribbean has astonished the world by producing three Nobel Laureates, noting that larger States with more citizens were yet to produce a single Nobel Laureate.
“Caribbean men and women have distinguished themselves on the global stage. We have produced sons and daughters of eminence and excellence who are to be found in almost all professions in almost every country of the world. These persons are products of a culture of struggle which has traditionally attached great value to education,” he remarked.
Furthermore, the Guyanese Head of State said that the Region’s fore-parents saw education as the vehicle for self-emancipation, enhanced self-esteem, social equality, economic well-being and political representation. He added that they made untold sacrifices to secure a better education for their children than they themselves had.
In addition, Granger reiterated the UWI Vice Chancellor’s plea to the recent Caribbean Community Heads of Government Summit for education to be re-engineered so that the Region can be more competitive in the modern world. He was particularly forceful in advocating increased investment in science and technology in order to foster greater innovativeness. He concluded that all these elements will be brought together under a regional project to develop a world-class institution in the provision of higher educational services. This campus is a good augury for social and scientific education in the Caribbean, he noted while adding it will provide greater access for a greater number of our people.
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