“Education as an economic sector.” Minister of Education Ronald Jones used those words in New York recently to describe a key part of his desire to expand the role of education in Barbados’ future development.
And as if to underscore his point, Jones cited the recent emergence of four foreign-owned and operated medical training institutions – the American University of Barbados; Queens University; the International University of Barbados and the Washington University College of Medicine – as avenues for economic growth and diversification.
“They are offshore medical schools and it is part of what I see as an emphasis to build out education as an economic sector” that would augment tourism and offshore financial services, was the way Jones told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY after he had spent about three hours focusing the attention of scores of Bajan-New Yorkers on education.
But those schools aren’t alone. On the horizon is an aviation educational training centre that’s linked to some prominent tertiary educational institutions in the United States (US) and Britain, he said.
“The aviation school is emerging and it has connections to Emery Riddle University in Florida and one or two agencies out of the United Kingdom,” explained the minister. “I believe that after it begins its operations it would take a few years to settle down before it does actual flying. It would involve aviation and engineering.”
It is expected to open its doors around August 1.
“We are convinced that it presented an authentic proposal. After we did our own investigation, we granted them a charter to operate,” said the minister.
His approach isn’t entirely new. More than 30 years ago, the Tom Adams Administration was eager to attract offshore medical and dental schools to the country to train American students who had dreams of becoming physicians and dentists but couldn’t get into universities at home.
Unfortunately, the Government’s plan floundered and was eventually abandoned because of intense domestic political opposition and scare mongering that enveloped the importation of cadavers by the St George’s University School of Medicine which was temporarily sited in Barbados.
It was looking for a home in the wake of the implosion of the Maurice Bishop administration in Grenada. Internal political strife in Grenada, intense external opposition from the Reagan administration in Washington that led to the US invasion of the Eastern Caribbean country and concerns about the safety of American students there triggered St George’s desire to shift operations to Barbados. In the end, the medical school returned to Grenada.
“We lost a golden opportunity to develop medical education as an economic sector,” said a senior Government official. “It was an idea that was well ahead of its time. Decades later, we are now accepting the wisdom of that form of education as a plank in our economic platform.”
Having earned a considerable amount of international acceptance from the medical and education establishment in the US and elsewhere, St George’s University, for instance, is considered a credible school which trains physicians not only for the US health care system but the Caribbean as well. Some Bajan and other Caribbean physicians who received their initial medical training in Grenada are practising their craft and saving lives in the US.
Clearly, the operations of privately owned offshore medical schools in Barbados made sense in the 1980s and they do today. That’s provided they maintain high standards of training. Admittedly, some of them back in the 1980s went the way of the Model-T Ford because they put profit ahead of the quality of education.
But much has changed since then. The UWI has established a sound medical school at Cave Hill; St George’s has become a major contributor to Grenada’s economic viability; and Barbados’ economy, which reached the peak of its performance around the turn of the 21st Century, has been in a prolonged slump for several years ever since the global Great Recession hit the western hemisphere, Europe and elsewhere in 2008.
Both Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, and Jones agree on an important aspect of the issue: high training standards must be a fact of life on the campuses of the offshore schools.
“They have to maintain high standards and we do heavy vetting and so far the AUB, the (American University of Barbados) has demonstrated competence,” said Jones. ”
Sir Hilary, a visionary and scholar, put it differently.
“I have no structural or ideological opposition to their presence,” he said of the offshore medical schools. “I just want to be assured by all of our governments across the region that these institutions are of quality; that they are accredited; that they offer programmes of merit that don’t bring our country [Barbados] and our Caribbean region into disrepute.”
“We do not wish our educational environment to be associated with academic dumping of inferior products and we don’t wish any of our citizens to be brought into programmes that would represent either a devaluation of their education or even a devaluation of their investments.”
Jones argued the economic prospects are substantial.
“About five to six thousand [foreign] students can be in Barbados. That can put substantial amounts of resources into the country,” said the minister. “At the medical schools, yes, we will have offshore teachers but also Barbadian doctors who would teach as well. There will be the building out of infrastructure.”
The UWI might even receive some spin-off benefits from the presence of the offshore medical schools.
It’s clear then that Barbados missed the boat in the 1980s.
“Barbados is the right place for this kind of development,” said Jones. “We must see our economy go beyond tourism and offshore financial services.”
Education in general and the UWI and the island’s school system in particular have been crucial launching pads for economic and social development since independence and that should continue.
