UG Vice Chancellor responds to Education Minister’s “value for money” concerns

Last Updated on Monday, 20 January 2025, 16:56 by Writer

Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Paloma Mohammed-Martin on Monday reacted to Minister of Education Priya Manickchand’s position that the country’s publicly-owned tertiary institution must show that the taxpayers’ dollars are being spent properly on producing “better” students.

“When I said that the university has to give value for money, some people were up in arms, but I insist it is the people’s money and we must get value for money,” the Education Minister said at the National Accreditation Council’s (NAC) formal presentation of its Accreditation Certificate to UG which scored 16.5 out of the 17 areas of evaluation by external assessors.

In her terse response, the Vice Chancellor said workers have been working beyond the call of duty without extra pay to improve UG’s standards. “We are not upset with anybody asking us about quality for money because we have been punching over our weight and delivering more than we’ve gotten through the sweat equity that staff put in here and that’s the truth,” Dr Mohammed-Martin said.

The Vice Chancellor said apart from UG’s institutional accreditation, a number of academic programmes in Petroleum Engineering and offerings by the School of Business were finalising arrangements for accreditation.

The Education Minister said the government’s demands are similar for other levels of education. Over the past four years, she has dealt with UG, saying that “if you’re honest” the institution must submit grades punctually, prepare proper lectures and deliver relevant and updated course content. She emphasised the importance of getting value for money, not because government was providing the funds, but because students expect to leave UG with greater knowledge, ability and capacity. “I repeat without hesitation and without apology that the university is going to have to give value for money,” Ms Manickchand, a UG alumnus stated.

Despite those criticisms, the Vice Chancellor, in her remarks, boasted that within the past four or five years UG has climbed 3,017 places in the international ranking to move from the middle bottom to just below the top, with the aim of getting into the top 200 in the next four or five years. “That’s where we should be, because you cannot say that you’re a world class country without a world class university, and we have to indeed deliver and stand on standards. Nobody, anybody who knows this administration of the university knows we don’t play, we accept our problems and we fix them,” she said.

With the abolition of tuition fees for UG students from January, 2025, this year’s National Budget allocated more than GY$13.1 billion to the institution. That amount, the Vice Chancellor said, amounted to 70 percent of what was requested and would put the UG administration on a firm financial footing. “I think for me and for the next Vice Chancellor who is going to come that they don’t have to scrounge for at least the basic operational funds that came from students’ fees,” he said. She thanked government, private sector and other donors for their financial support over the years, even as she put them on alert to assist with “gap funding” in the future.

Remarking about the importance of the 61-year-old UG having been accredited, she recalled that it was known in pre-independence Guyana as ‘Jagan’s Night School’ because it was founded by then Premier of British Guiana, Dr Cheddi Jagan. “If you’re coming from an accredited university, it means something, when you go to a university that is looking for accreditation. When you’re demanding accreditation, it means something to the people you’re asking from,” she said.

The UG Vice Chancellor said the 2040 Blueprint contains four aspirational goals: at least one university graduate in every household, centre of excellence for research-driven solutions for local and regional problems, leader in nine specific area, six of which are in the sciences, and produce successful citizens “anywhere in the world”.

“The University of Guyana is not ever going to shirk from its mandate. Ask us any question, we will answer if we have the answer and if we don’t we will work towards finding it,” Dr Mohammed said.

She said all governments over the years have provided assistance to Guyana’s “brain and heart”. “All governments from the inception in 1963 have been giving the university something; sometimes not enough. We had to bring in fees at a certain time but they’ve given the university. They never said ‘we’re not giving UG anything at all,” she said. For decades, she said UG has experienced good and bad times “but never, ever have we dropped the ball”. “Sometimes, we barely held it above the ground because that’s what we’re able to do,” said Dr Mohammed, also a former UG student.

UG’s institutional accreditation, she said, was an aspirational objective of previous vice chancellors.