Editorial | New UWI review committee

The University of the West Indies (UWI) needs to reverse the incertitude in the region about how, and by whom, it is handling the Byron governance report calling for an overhaul of how the institution is managed and financed. That requires that it speak with clarity on the matter given the establishment of a new body with seemingly the same mandate.

On May 10, the university, owned by 17 Caribbean governments, announced that Keith Mitchell, prime minister of Grenada, had been appointed by its grants committee to “lead a team of technical experts to review the academic and administrative operations of the University Centre”. The University Centre, headed by Vice-Chancellor Hilary Beckles, provides overarching leadership and direction to the institution, which include five campuses.

It was Sir Hilary, it was reported, who made the recommendation for the committee and its leadership by Dr Mitchell. “Integral to this review effort is maintaining the UWI as one regional enterprise with five campuses while demonstrating its efficiency,” the statement said.

There is nothing in the normal course of events that would raise questions about this exercise. Indeed, management reviews are best-practice processes for organisations. Moreover, 25 years of the centre’s existence, and a problematic economic environment, make it as good a time as any to have a hard look at how the concept of centre and decoupling the vice-chancellor’s job from that of principal of the Mona (Jamaica) campus has worked. Further, the mandate of maintaining the regional character is one we expect stakeholders to embrace.

Except that the UWI needs to explain the difference between the mandate of Dr Mitchell’s group and the task of a committee of the University Council – the UWI’s highest decision-making body – to determine what elements of a report by the commission, chaired by former Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) President Dennis Byron, should be adopted by the university. Although only announced in mid-March, the group (the names of whose members were not disclosed) reviewing the Byron Report was appointed in January. It could be reasonably assumed, therefore, to have been at work since then.

The need for clarity on these matters is important for several critical reasons.

Indeed, Prime Minister Mitchell’s team, whose other members were not disclosed, will inevitably go over much of the ground covered by the Byron Commission, which completed its work a mere nine months ago. Unless the intention is to impeach the Byron Report, whose findings have stirred angst and management politics at the university.

BYZANTINE GOVERNANCE

Commissioned by the UWI chancellor, Trinidadian businessman Robert Bermudez, the Byron Report highlighted a historically Byzantine governance structure at the institution, resulting in a concentration of power, weak accountability, and limited transparency. It called for a significant overhaul of the university’s management systems to flatten their reporting structures and to bring the council closer to the centre of operations via an executive committee. Some perceive that this would translate to a shift in some power to appointees of the chancellor at the expense of control by the vice-chancellor and campus principals.

Another major source of controversy is the Byron Commission’s proposal for solving the university’s financial crisis, exemplified by the UWI’s combined deficit of nearly BDS$244 million over the last three financial years, including BDS$66.5 million in 2019-20. They suggested that students be asked to double, to 40 per cent, their contribution to the cost of their education. But students, the commission said, should be provided with borrowing facilities with “long-term, mortgage-type, graduated payments that are aligned with the graduates’ ability to repay”.

The implied obligation of governments is to cover up to 85 per cent of the university’s costs. However, faced with deep fiscal problems, their contribution, in recent years, has hovered at between 45 per cent and 47 per cent of the UWI’s expenditure. The university has been forced to write off millions of dollars owed by students and governments, and in some cases, has been given, or promised, assets such as land by the latter to cover debt.

FUNDING SCHEME

Professor Beckles, the vice-chancellor, has sketched a funding scheme that has governments contribute 50 per cent of the university’s costs and students paying 15 per cent. Of the remaining amount, 15 per cent would come from undefined partnerships with the private sector, 10 per cent from the university’s entrepreneurial activities, and five per cent each from alumina associations and global partnerships/donor relationships. Under this arrangement, the university would, in the short term, cut its expenditure (BDS$1 billion in 2018-19; BDS$701 million 2020-21 – budgeted) by 10 per cent and increase its earnings by a similar amount.

This is part of the backdrop against which Prime Minister Mitchell’s committee has now entered the fray absent an explanation of whether the work of the group established by the University Council will continue, or if, indeed, it has started. If Dr Mitchell’s committee is intended to supersede the earlier group, it would be useful to know who are its members and how they plan to proceed with the assignment.

This newspaper suggested the tabling of the Byron Commission Report in Jamaica’s Parliament and that it be sent to the legislature’s human resources and social development committee for public hearings. That should still happen. Notwithstanding, Dr Mitchell’s group, having published its mandate, should similarly publicly engage stakeholders in all of the university’s contributing countries in charting a long-term path for this vital institution.