UG seeks assistance outside of Govt.

May 04, 2010 News

… subventions not enough, University operating at a deficit – Vincent Alexander

Vice Chancellor of the University Lawrence Carrington, just last week revealed the Strategic Plan of the University to members of the Private Sector and diplomatic community as well as several NGOs.
Titled Strategic Plan 2009 – 2012: Advancing Management, Infrastructure and Quality (AMIQ) the plan according to Carrington “examines the state of the institution with an almost brutal frankness in the first two chapters.
No holds barred! Indeed the plan does have on page 17 a section 2.5 titled ‘Our Weaknesses’ which lists numerous issues such as high staff turnover and an inability to attract well qualified staff as a result of inadequate remuneration, a ‘stressful’ environment that apparently results in low staff morale and poor performance as well as low levels of responsiveness to institutional issues and initiatives among others. Information, Carrington noted, that was the driving force behind the push to address management, infrastructure and quality of services being delivered.
He pointed out to the members of the Private Sector that the University produces the bulk of the nation’s educated workforce. As a result, the nature and quality of the graduate the University is producing will have a direct impact on the quality and performance of the human resources that are available to the sector.
According to Carrington, the university’s basket of offerings needs to fulfill the demands of the nation’s industries, as such, more effort and attention needs to be paid to the improvement of the management at all levels of the University and the administrative structures and practices needed to ensure efficiency in achieving the University’s educational goals.
The resource management of the University was one of the major factors affecting the institution’s ability to follow through with their plans for improvement.
On the note of financial resources, Registrar of the University, Vincent Alexander, revealed that the University has still not gotten the kind of subvention that they feel is appropriate for the continued and improved operation of the University.
He said that Senior Administration Officials including the University Bursar had approached the Ministry of Finance through the Permanent Secretary to have the annual figure that the University receives increased but there was no response after the initial meeting then the new budget was subsequently released in which the monies allocated fell short of what was requested.
Carrington, in his presentation, pointed out that if the University was to attain the goals as outlined in the Strategic plan, then the resource base of the institution needed to be diversified to reflect investment by a wider range of stakeholders in the national enterprise. He said that the binding interest between the private sector and the University was the quality of the two parties’ outputs.
As Carrington put it, “There is a direct link between the quality of our output and the quality of your output.”
One area that was highlighted for more attention in the future was that of research. Carrington claimed that the service of the University would make valuable information available to members of the sector.
Carrington went on to highlight the four broad strategic goals of the plan and the associated investment costs on a year by year basis over the three year span that would bring the total required investment over that period to some US $21M – a sum that he said was not excessive, given the dividends to be received from the effort.
The goals are to include the level and quality of teaching, taking into consideration the level of accreditation which needed to be improved and the number and extent of courses on offer both directly from the University and through the distance education programmes – all of which would require the bulk of the funding, coming in at some US $19.3M over the three year period.
The other goals were the improvement of the managerial and administrative structure, bringing it into accord with current expectations, the hiring and retention of better staff and the improvement of the physical facilities.
“High quality results will not come from a static, deteriorating and ill equipped physical environment.”

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