@ Crusoe | November 15, 2011 at 4:05 PM |
I appreciate where you are coming from: Turn education into a business with a local, regional and international marketing focus.

But immediate savings in government expenditure have to be gained. But something as achievable as energy saving seems almost impossible to implement. Despite the PR airings and gaseous talk one only has to pass any government building after 8.00 pm and not occupied on a 24 hr basis and see the buildings lit up like a Xmas tree where only basic security lighting is required. But I take your point that if Education is to be “protected from the scalpel” then serious expenditure adjustments would have to be made in other areas other than Health. But it seems as if the mountain will be too high to climb for the timid boys in charge! How on earth can expenditure be cut by at least 10-15% when we can’t even get the managers at the Drainage Unit to arrange removal within 24 hrs the muck and debris extracted from the drains but placed in an unsightly manner on the pavement only for the heavy rains to perpetuate the vicious cycle. Good luck, Crusoe! We can bet that you and your old man Owen Friday will be rescued from the new land of the flying fish called Tobago before any of the initiatives you and others proposed are implemented in a “SOS” manner.

@ true to form | November 15, 2011 at 4:51 PM |;

No one can gainsay the sociological importance of Education. Neither can one deny the stark fact that funding is the lynchpin and that is the support plank that is under severe pressure and serious choices have to be made in order to keep Education off the sacrificial chopping block .
Your proposal for a “separate” University of Barbados sounds great and has a measure of jingoistic appeal. But the reality is that the UWI has a track record and international recognition in academic circles. The brand “Barbados” might hold sway in tourism circles but I don’t think it can be marketed when it comes to academic excellence.
You should note that a facility which allows students to repay some of the cost of tertiary education after graduation and gaining employment has already been recommended.

@ true to form | November 15, 2011 at 8:55 PM | ;

And the DLP would beat the BLP in a Usain Bolt fashion. If there is one social advancement that the Dems can brag about it is “free” universal education. They took the baton to the finishing line when free secondary education was extended to people from the lower socio-economic brackets.
Any openly suggested proposal on the part of the BLP to make adjustments to the overall dysfunctional system starting at the tertiary level would spell electoral disaster and viewed as taking away a child’s toy in the eyes of the blinkered masses who have been raised on a diet of “welfarism and political largesse” buttressed with a state dependent mendicancy attitude of the pseudo-middle class.

Mr. Stuart knows this. That is why he has fired the first major shot across the bow of the BLP slightly rudderless ship. The old sea captain OSA himself is a beneficiary of this” leg up the socio-economic ladder” sponsorship and would not want appear as biting the hand of EWB that fed him in the 60’s &70’s.
But the stark reality is that, true to form, what goes up must come down. Whichever, party is in power harsh expenditure cuts must be introduced and Education can only hide for a year or so. It’s really unfair (poetic justice, maybe!) that the party that took ownership of this unique piece of social engineering might have to be the mechanic to dismantle the vehicle. The BLP under the “old brigand” OSA has been exceedingly fortunate in not being confronted with such harsh economic realities (even the 8% is like a stumped toe when compared to the soon to be broken aspirations of the young and working poor. No income, no jobs, no assets (Ninj(n)a generation- the gloomy reality facing young Bajans unless their parents have it made.
But I think his luck has run out unless he intends to realize his Machiavellian goal of curtailing Mia’s burning ambition to become PM even if it means a terminal defeat at the polls thus sullying his previously admirable record.

@ True to form

…at what cost? The population’s? Will our very sovereignty be sold off to the highest bidder so that we can “sparkle?” I’d rather the country make a few sacrifices now economically, so we can survive much later on down the line, instead of passing our souls, land & identity (or what little we have of it!) off for a few coins!