UG Student Society endorses campaign to squash tuition fees

Mar 07, 2019 News

With election season likely to occur this year or the next, a campaign has begun to lobby the government to provide free access to public tertiary education, and it has been endorsed by the University of Guyana Students’ Society (UGSS). Leading this movement is advocate, Elson Lowe.

UGSS President, Devta Ramroop

Speaking to this publication, UGSS President, Devta Ramroop, said that education remains a responsibility of the government and is an investment into human resources that will save trouble later in public spending, crime, health and economic growth. She contends, “We can no longer use the excuse of money.”
Lowe said that the provision of free access to tertiary education is not unheard of, as it was initially provided at the lone public university, since Article 27 of the Constitution dictates that “Every citizen has the right to free education from nursery to university as well as at non-formal places where opportunities are provided for education and training”.
This movement is about bringing the university into compliance with the Constitution, he said. The advocate had also raised this contention at the inaugural session of the Policy Desk on January 5, a youth movement initiated to pressure the government to act in the best interests of the youth cohort.
Lowe has already written to President David Granger and has conversed with several ministers, who have expressed that education is an important issue. Lowe said that this should be a priority for the government.
He is also writing to the leaders of all parties, to find out their stance on the issue of tuition fees at public education institutions.

Advocate for free tertiary education, Elson Lowe

Lowe contends that for someone to have made the decision to introduce tuition fees at the University of Guyana, it means they acted in contradiction of the nation’s supreme law. Now, he said, if tuition fees are to remain, the Constitution would have to be amended. And if the law is amended to allow tuition fees to be attached to public college, then it should be decided by way of referendum.
In the meantime, Lowe is conducting continuous polls using various media, predominantly with students and other young persons. He intends to poll 20,000 people, in total, but has already polled 3,000. The preliminary results are expected to be released next week.
Lowe said that, according to statistics provided by the Bureau of Statistics, only 2.3 percent of Guyana’s population has a bachelor’s degree. For developed countries, that figure stands at about 30 percent. That means, he said, that Guyana is more than 10 times behind where it needs to be, to provide adequate manpower to perform well on the international stage, and to adequately anticipate the economic boom expected from the budding oil and gas industry. He has calculated that the cost to make UG free of tuition, according to his calculations, would be about $4B; an amount that he is sure the government will be able to manage, given Guyana’s economic prospects.
Low studied political science and economics at the Amherst College, in Massachusetts, before going on to work at the world’s premier financial firm, Goldman Sachs. He also interned for a political think tank in Washington D.C., Campaign for Our Future, and co-founded a local non-profit, The Benab Foundation. Further, he has done research on the technology industry at Stanford University, and throughout Silicon Valley. He now works with the Government of Guyana.