Editorial | Debate report beyond UWI council

Though belated, the disclosure that the council of the University of the West Indies (UWI) has begun a review of the report into the management and finances of the university to determine what bits of the report should be implemented is welcomed by supporters of the academy, including this newspaper. However, what was revealed does not go far enough. It falls short on transparency and process. The situation demands a broader, fuller, and more robust engagement. In other words, the university’s entire constituency should be involved.

A bit of background and context is, perhaps, important. Every decade or so, we are advised, the university’s chancellor commissions an analysis of the governance of the institution, which delves into the efficiency of its operations and whether the systems are fit for purpose. The university’s balance sheet also gets critical assessment.

The latest of these reports, commissioned by the current chancellor, Robert Bermudez, and done by a group chaired by former President of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Sir Dennis Byron, made clear that the UWI faces a potentially existential crisis: its finances are in bad shape and its owners, 17 Caribbean governments, do not have the wherewithal to pump significant amounts of cash into the university to keep it viable. If they can afford to, they have not demonstrated the will to do so.

ARREARS AND DEBT

In recent years, subventions from governments, on average, have hovered around 45 per cent of the university’s income rather than the obligated 80 per cent of the economic cost of educating students. Several governments have large arrears, some of which have to be written off. Students, too, owe the university. In 2019, that debt was BDS$40.2 million after accounting for the impairment of BDS$51.7 million. The university, in 2018-19, ran a deficit of BDS$91.2 million, only marginally better than the previous year’s BDS$93.5 million.

As the Byron Commission noted, these financials, if uncorrected, pose a deeper, long-term risk to the institution as is reflected in the UWI’s composite financial index (CFI), the matrix generally applied by not-for-profits to determine their financial health. At the time of the report, the UWI’s CFI had fallen to minus 1.21, where 3.0 is considered to be the starting range of decent financial health for universities.

It was not only in the academy’s finances that the Byron Commission found problems. It pointed to a governance system that is bureaucratic, slow, often inefficient, unresponsive and unaccountable, and in need of overhaul. Significantly, the commission linked those reforms to another of its fundamental recommendations: that students be asked to pay 40 per cent, rather than 20 per cent, of the cost of their education. The proviso was that regional governments should install systems to make students’ loans more accessible and repayments manageable.

According to a UWI statement last week, a January meeting of its council, its overarching management body, considered the report and“agreed to the establishment of a committee to review said recommendations and to put forward to council those for adoption and subsequent implementation”. That committee is to present its report to the full council at the end of April.

Two issues arise here. Given the critical importance of The University of the West Indies to Caribbean citizens, and the deep public interest in this matter, it would be useful, in the interest of transparency, if the people on the review committee were identified to help stakeholders have a sense of its representation and balance.

BROADER ISSUES NOT ADDRESSED

Further, Sir Hilary Beckles, the university’s vice-chancellor, effectively its CEO, has offered the broad outlines of an alternative financial-adjustment programme that is at odds with the Byron Commission’s call for higher student fees. Sir Hilary’s plan includes a 10 per cent cut in spending over two years, matched by an equivalent rise in income over the same period. It also expects governments to supply half of the UWI’s income and that the university would also pursue foreign partnerships and arrangements to drive income. The broader issues of governance, including the UWI’s cumbersome management systems and oversight arrangements, were not publicly addressed. Nonetheless, there is a sense of tension between Sir Hilary’s perception for the evolution of the academy, and what the Byron Commission believes is affordable, what external partners should be targeted, and how the process should be monitored.

In the circumstances, we repeat our view that the Byron Commission’s report – given the competing visions that have emerged, as well as the commission’s concern for what they sketched as its ponderous bureaucracy – ought to be debated beyond the confines of the UWI’s council. For example, the UWI management has said that a major contributor to the poor state of the university’s finances is the deficit at the Mona campus, to whose cost of operations the Jamaican Government now contributes less than a third of the money. There are questions for the Jamaican Government to answer on this score, including whether it will ever pay more.

The education minister, Fayval Williams, must, therefore, table the Byron Commission report in Parliament and the Human Resources and Social Development and/or the Public Administration and Appropriations committees asked to convene hearings on it.