UWI Guild predicts roll fall

A SHARP DECLINE in student numbers and the eventual “loss” of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus may well be the fallout from Government’s decision to make Barbadians pay the full UWI tuition fees.
This warning came yesterday from outgoing president of the Guild of Students, Damani Parris, during a news conference at the campus.
The major announcement at the briefing was that there had been no progress in talks since last year aimed at getting Government to change its position.
Parris told reporters not many students or their families could meet the requirement to pay an additional $5 000 per year, starting next September
According to Parris, 50 per cent of Cave Hill’s students were part-timers, a large number of them working full-time, with bills to pay and financial commitments to family. He said, too, that a number of them might well lose jobs because of Government’s plan to retrench 3 000 public sector workers.