UWI Scholarship $$$ to local students should decrease - Dr. Potter
Speaking during the 2012 Standing Finance Committee (SFC) deliberations, the Acting PS was at the time speaking about the bill she received from UWI at the end of December 2011.
Territorial Member Hon. Archibald C. Christian asked, how far back did the bill go to which she replied “when I called the University of the West Indies, they told me that they were speaking to me from 2006/2007”.
Dr. Potter further stated that the bill was received at the end of December and they are now trying to see how the situation could be reconciled.
Submitting a solution to reduce the outstanding amount until the bill is reconciled, she suggested that the amount of money received by the students attending UWI should be reduced.
“We need to take a decision on how payments are being made to students of the University of the West Indies. Most of the students who go to UWI are law students or medical students. Students studying in the U.S would get all of the funds in incremental payments by semester to pay their fees. At the University of the West Indies the fees were split into Government contribution and tuition. A student was paid $25,000 in scholarship and the UWI students only pay their tuition from that amount. The Ministry still had to pay the contribution to the University which meant that they were double paying if they continued with that situation at present. The last time I checked, a medical student at UWI in the clinical years would be paying $7,000-$8,000 for tuition and all other fees, but they were given $25,000 in scholarships. The ministry would pay the economic cost to the university which was not taken out of that $25,000,” the Acting PS told the SFC members.
According to Dr. Potter, “If a student went to a University such as in the United States, they received $25,000 paid in equal amounts per semester for the year which would take care of all their expenses which included tuition, boarding, meals, everything. A student that goes to UWI received the same $25,000 but did not pay the full amount”.
Member of the Eighth District Hon. Marlon Penn, enquired how long this had been going on, to which Dr. Potter replied, “This had been the arrangement for a very long time”.
In relation to when the figure of $25,000 came about, Dr. Potter stated that she already began to look into the situation and will send the report as soon as they found out ‘what was going on’.
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