The university as a pathfinder to growth

Edward Seaga, Contributor 

I will begin by explaining some of my cultural involvements and how they have moulded me as a Jamaican, because culture is the most powerful force in shaping people and branding nations. This has proven itself to be unquestionably so for Jamaica. In the near 50 years since Independence, it is the music of reggae and the creativity of the ordinary young people from folk society, in urban and rural areas, which have positioned and branded Jamaica internationally as a small country with an exceptionally high-recognition profile. And thanks to Usain Bolt and the athletes from UTech, that recognition has soared stratospherically.

The turbulent '70s was a period of political and economic reversal because the promoters of alien socialist policies failed to recognise that they were building a political superstructure at the expense of the economic base. Hence, the economy ended the decade in a meltdown as the second worst in the world, according to the World Bank, and a political superstructure which collapsed from its own overbearing weight of unacceptable political principles which made the state pre-eminent over the individual. I fought these principles because we need less, not more, politics. When there is too much politics in politics, politics cannot do what politics should do in helping the process of development to develop.

Unfortunately, this failed political system can be considered to be the foundation of the creation of a failed state today:

1. Failure for more than 20 years to achieve meaningful economic growth, a record for any peaceful nation;
   
2. Failure to control national indebtedness, which continues to position the country in the top three most-indebted countries in the world;
   
3. Failure to create a nation of first-class citizens only, leaving the majority behind to suffer the injustices of being second-class;
   
4. Failure to rectify a dysfunctional education system, continuing the record of history to educate less than 30 per cent of the young people, condemning the rest to being 'wutless boys' and 'careless gals'.

As a consequence, after 50 years, we have failed to become a functional nation.

At the root of this problem is the failure to create a literate society. This can be embarrassing, even in one of the more delicate experiences of life, a statement of love:

'Gal, if yuh love me an' yuh no write it,

How me fe know?

Gal, if yuh write it an' me cyaan read it,

How me fi know?

(Anonymous)

Seventy per cent of those who enter primary schools cannot cope with primary education because of illiteracy. Sixty per cent of those who enter secondary schools cannot cope with secondary education because of illiteracy. Between 60 and 70 per cent of those who leave secondary school cannot cope with the economy or the society because their education was impaired by illiteracy. This scenario is the same as it was before Independence. We have made little gain, although there has been much effort by education ministers and educational leaders to promote improvement in literacy.

We live in a country in which sectoral productive resources are running out:

1. Mining has virtually maximised its growth, limited as it is, by some expansion of current production, but scarcity of new areas to mine;
   
2. Tourism has virtually maximised the availability of beaches which can be developed in developed areas;
   
3. Manufacturing has contracted from a contribution of 19 per cent of GDP some 40 years ago to seven per cent today, because of obsolescence, overbearing interest rates, and exceptionally high energy costs;
   
4. Agriculture remains underdeveloped although rich in unused lands and unused hands.

New growth

After recognising the limitations of the agricultural sector, education of our human resources, of which there is an abundance, remains the only base for substantial new growth. The mantra of the Government is 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. The banking system is liquid and, for the first time in more than 20 years, bankers are working hard to find borrowers. Yet the banking system remains underinvested. This is a conundrum that must be resolved by the Planning Institute of Jamaica by in-depth research, not by creating new plans based on the old arguments of self-interested groups or by foreign intellects who do not understand the Jamaican psyche.

Between 1987 and 1989, a record 100,000 jobs were created by strategically determining what kind of jobs were necessary and what incentives were required. JAMPRO was tasked with the responsibility of finding the appropriate sources of this employment in export garment manufacturing and hotel expansion. Those opportunities do not exist anymore. China has usurped the domain of low-cost export manufacturing, and after the massive expansion of the Spanish hotels, there is a limitation on future hotels and jobs.

All this leaves us like the motorist seeking directions from a farmer on a country road as to how to reach his destination. "Go down de road," the farmer said, "until you reach a corner. Turn de corner and you will see a fork in de road. Tek it."

So what areas of growth for employment are available? President Barack Obama has the correct answer. In the March 7 issue of The New York Times Digest, he says emphatically: "If we want more good news on the jobs front, then we've got to make more investments in education." Educated persons are not the basis of the problem of unemployment. It is the uneducated who are massively unemployed.

The unemployed cannot create employment. It takes skilled workers to employ the unskilled. Taking this argument further, it requires professionally trained members of the labour force at the tertiary level to create opportunities for skilled workers. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that a vital role of the university is that of a promoter and creator of jobs. Education must be a tool for learning and earning; it must serve the need to know and the need to grow. As Etana tells us, "Don't keep the truth from the youth."

The role of the University of Technology becomes particularly relevant here. From its inception, it has undertaken to create skilled and professional graduates for the labour force. The rapid pace of its recent expansion, particularly under President Errol Morrison and his team, is dazzling and exciting. With two colleges and five faculties, UTech is no longer a small institution.

Every university graduate who needs a job will find a job sooner or later; hence, universities are like factories which create jobs, but with one critical exception. It costs less to finance the education of a university graduate, on average, than it costs to create any but the cheapest manufacturing job. And universities require no costly foreign exchange from the Bank of Jamaica to provide raw materials and capital goods. They earn some foreign exchange by producing foreign-exchange earners through remittances. So why not think out of the box? Consider universities to be factories; incentivise, or facilitate them, rather than constrain, to reduce the wasted human resources of the country.

With 11,000 students, UTech has sprouted from small to medium size and can expand further if given the freedom by Government to do so. The most recent poll shows 83 per cent of graduates of UTech find employment within the first six months. I am proud to be part of this dynamic at this time.

There is no greater waste of capacity in the entire country than the 70 per cent of non-literate non- graduates whose chances at being productive and successful are forlorn, even after a dozen years of schooling. This is a most critical area of investment for growth, prosperity, social development and cultural well-being.

A university education does even more:

1. Graduates can scale the social walls of exclusion, raising their own status in the society and the recognition due to earners of higher incomes, through academic achievement, an immense social benefit;
   
2. More important, it is the most effective way of reducing the gap between the haves and the have-nots, a national imperative; and
   
3. It can create a society which aims, in my own words: "Not to destroy wealth, but to create it, not to pull down the strong who succeed, but to pull up the weak who are trying not to accept ignorance as a way of life,but to abolish it;  Not to tolerate injustice to man, for every man must have equal rights and justice."

The university in Jamaica has not been given appropriate recognition as an effective player in job creation, a dynamic transformer of the social structure and a mixing pot of cultural creativity.

It is the institution on which our future will depend to transform hopelessness to hopefulness. It is the powerhouse of intellectual energy, the bank of human resources and the soul of the society.

Remember, again, my own words:

"There is no educated country that is poor and no poor country that is educated. If prosperity be the goal, higher skills are the tools and knowledge is the way."

My congratulations to all those students, administrative staff, faculty and members of the University Council for nurturing this gem to hang like a pearl of pride on the necklace of the nation.

Edward Seaga, a former prime minister, is chancellor of the University of Technology and distinguished fellow at the University of the West Indies.