Latest update January 4th, 2025 5:30 AM
Feb 12, 2015 Editorial
The University of Guyana is still on strike. The students who have been called on to pay more for their tuition are out of the classrooms because the lecturers are contending that for too long they have been underpaid and overworked.
The products of the University of Guyana should be the people who would develop the country. The United States, the United Kingdom, China, India and a host of other countries are what they are because of their students.
North Korea which is something of a pariah in the international world have people with more technological savvy that any Guyanese. This is because of the products of the Universities. Its neighbor to the south is making cars and electronic appliances, many of which we use in Guyana, because of the products of the Universities in that country.
The local University may be best cited for the few engineers it produces but who must go overseas to hone their skills because there is no place in Guyana to help these people develop. We have doctors who may be theoretically sound but who from all experiences are little better than hopeless when it comes to dealing with people. More than a few of them have presided over the death of expectant mothers.
Today, there are no classes because the teachers are insisting that they must be properly compensated if they are to develop the younger generation. While in some countries teachers are the third highest paid, in Guyana they are among the worst. Small wonder, then, that there is a marked decline in the quality of education in schools.
The Education Minister says that the government spends a significant portion of the budget on education, that it builds schools and installs computers in these schools. However, the physical infrastructure is only as good as the woodwork. People are the ones required to add life, literally, to these institutions.
Therefore poorly paid teachers would impart knowledge in a manner that would leave a lot to be desired. The result is a case of the children from homes where the parents have disposable incomes doing better than others. And there are many reasons for the poor performance of children from such homes but the most glaring is favouritism. The children who can afford to compensate the teacher would get more attention. The others are simply ignored.
And so we come to the University of Guyana where there is the carryover of the treatment of teachers in the lower education system. There is poor pay, hence the current strike by the teachers. There is a saying that money alone cannot buy enhanced performance but it can surely offer some stability to the staff.
Guyana has lost its best teachers because of a lack of proper pay. Some of the teachers who left have come back but only because they have solved the problem of their children’s future and they are a bit comfortable financially.
At the University of Guyana the teachers or lecturers want a 25 per cent increase on their pay. Indeed, the University said that its financial base was small so it hiked the rates all with a view to paying more to the lecturers. But it would seem that while the students have begun paying more, there seems to be still not enough money to properly compensate the lecturers.
It is here that the government should step in because the government has imposed itself on the University by way of its nominees to the University board. But this is not happening; the government remains aloof.
Meanwhile, no learning is taking place and the country is bound to suffer, not that it is unaccustomed to suffering. A survey revealed that close to 90 per cent of the University graduates leave these shores. And they do get jobs overseas because they were actually taught. Perhaps it is the knowledge that many of those University graduates will leave these shores that is preventing the government from actually making a sizeable loan to the University to compensate the lecturers.
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