Prof Imbert: Higher UTT fees could work out at $100 a month

PROF Clem Imbert, chairman of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), told Newsday on Friday the university's management was having meetings with the student body to try to minimise the effect of a recent rise in the bundle of non-tuition fees.

The amount students have to pay has risen from $400 to $1,200 a year.

"Management had a meeting on Thursday with the students," he said. "It was very fruitful."

He suggested any agreement on a payment plan for these fees to be spread out could see students paying just $100 per month.

He also explained, "The fees that would have raised were not tuition fees, which are dealt with by GATE.

"GATE has a sliding scale now. You only get 100 per cent depending on your family income. You could get 50 per cent or 25 per cent.

"That's not the tuition fees we were talking about, but registration fees and fees for amenities and so on: fees for insurance, ID card, that kind of thing."He said any increase in tuition fees could only be made by the Government.

Imbert said the non-tuition fees were last raised 12 years ago.

Newsday asked why these fees were being raised.

Imbert replied, "We had some very high unexpected costs in the last year, and that is expected to continue this year. For example, the licence fees for our online platform: we had to pay a much higher fee."

Imbert said the licence fees were for platforms known as Canvass and Moodle which serve universities.

"Then there are a number of other things related to that. We had to boost up our ICT system. We had to make sure all our lecturers were well-equipped and so on."

Asked what tuition fees were typically paid by students, factoring in GATE, he referred Newsday to UTT president Prof Prakash Persad.

Persad told Newsday he had met the student guild executive on Thursday and would meet the student body on Monday to get their suggestions and discuss a special payment plan.

He said the fee hike was linked to classes having to go online since March 2020, including UTT having to pay for more Zoom licences, plus a variety of other expenditure to accommodate distance learning, all on top of the UTT's previous expenses.

"The university is in a precarious position. Our subvention has been reduced drastically," he added.

Persad said UTT did not want to have to fire any staff and so would work more efficiently. He said he himself had come from a poor background where as a student he had to walk to UWI every day, so he had a lot of empathy with the UTT students of today.

He said last year the UTT's enrolment numbers rose, adding, "So clearly people were affording it."

Persad noted help to students ranging from scholarships to lecturers dipping into their own pockets.

"We are looking to assist students as much as we can."

Newsday asked what were the tuition fees typically paid by a UTT student, whether subsidised at zero, 25, 50 or 100 per cent by GATE, but Persad did not have these details.

However he was able to say the tuition fees for a two-year postgraduate degree, which now gets zero GATE subsidy, was typically $36,000.

"Private institutions are a lot more," he said.

Persad said the UTT had been very supportive of students during the pandemic, taking measures such as letting new students access online lectures while they awaited their results from the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC).

"A whole lot of stuff was put in place to support them."