Who should pay and how?

There are some promising signs in education: GSAT scores were stronger this year; the Caribbean Examinations Council has praised Jamaica for improvements in CXC passes this year; Grade Four Literacy test scores have been inching upwards; and the Government has announced, as official public policy, the reduction of subventions to tertiary education and the shift of resources to the lower levels of the education system. Yes, that is a positive development, despite the loud protests of the privileged sub-sector at both the student and administration levels.

And there is bangarang at the Students' Loan Bureau out of which, hopefully, something more useful than the dismissal of the executive director and the resignation of the board will come. Speculation is rife that the public projection by the former executive director, Lenice Barnett, that tertiary fees would likely double from the reduction of subsidies led to her axing. The minister of finance says he acted on the basis of an audit report which indicted Ms Barnett for poor management practices, if not outright illegal actions. Of course, one does not preclude the other.

Promising signs notwithstanding, the education system is in shambles after massive expansion at the post-primary level, numerous studies, and tons of money thrown at it in cavalier fashion over the last few decades. Education has for years been getting the biggest slice of the post-debt servicing budget - last year it was 13 per cent.

The most powerful index of its poor performance is the readiness factor from one level to the next. Students from early childhood are performing poorly on the Learning Readiness Inventory at Grade One Primary. We are forgetting that the GSAT was not intended to be merely a placement exam for students entering the secondary level, although it has boiled down to that. It is the Grade Six Achievement Test, intended to be an exit measure of student performance at the primary level.

With math and English average scores bouncing around in the 50s per cent, that 'achievement' is dismal. But perhaps the most devastating bit of performance data is that around 85 per cent of those who have spent five years in a secondary school leave unready for higher education, or work requiring the minimum five CSEC passes.

The tertiary-education sector is a powerful special interest group which has been able to manipulate public policy to its own advantage, claiming special privileges and pleading special needs. The Gleaner on

Monday last reported from a 2009 paper put out by the UWI-affiliated Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) that, "'Given the current operation of financial markets in Jamaica, in which loans must generally be secured, a privately funded higher education system would risk marginalising those Jamaicans who come from modest backgrounds, but have made it to university or college by dint of their talent and hard work.'"

This is naked sectoral special pleading. The fact is that 85 per cent of secondary school graduates cannot set foot in a university, not because they cannot afford it but because they do not qualify. An expanding tertiary sector will soon run up against a supply problem!

Even after weighting for the real cost of education at the various levels, the allocation differentials are stark: With 7.2 per cent of the student population at the tertiary level, that sector gets 18.1 per cent of the education budget, while secondary gets 33.5 per cent and early childhood only 3.8 per cent.

Holness commended

Minister Andrew Holness must be commended for the courage to take the bull by the horn. The base and middle of the education system must be strengthened, lifting the possibility of every child qualifying for tertiary level education if they have the ability and is willing to make the effort. The single most important target in education now is universal literacy. Not spell and guess literacy, but the ability to gather information fluently from a range of media, including ICT, process and use information especially for further self-directed learning.

It is students at the tertiary level who are best able to pay for their own education as a mortgage investment in their own future. Which brings up the CaPRI issue of loan financing, echoed by opposition spokesman on education Senator Basil Waite, whose party, when in government, did nothing about the matter. Waite says that, "until you outline a plan as to how you are going to capitalise the Students' Loan Bureau so that everybody who wants to pursue tertiary education can have access to financing, then this thing that they are talking about, in terms of increasing the burden on students is a non-starter."

Just by way of comparison, the $200,000 yearly minimum tuition fee for a four year degree adds up to $800,000, which buys about a half of the cheapest 1500cc sedan on the market, or 16 per cent of a small $5-million house, if any can be found in today's inflated real estate market.

The Waite "thing" is not all that complex. And we want to hope that the shake up at the SLB is part of a larger plan to create a student-loan facility which will be able to meet the demand for loan support. Incremental capitalisation, say, over five years, is the way to go. I support the minister's radical plan to provide state financial support to students rather than to institutions. A part of the per capita support should be given to the student to spend in the institution of choice, including private institutions, and a part going towards the capitalisa-tion of the revolving loan fund to be borrowed.

'Scholarship' route

Rather than the flat rate approach for granting subsidies which now prevails, with government footing up to 80 per cent of real costs, a smart Government should go the 'scholarship' route of skewing subsidies towards national priority areas determined by development objectives and manpower needs assessments. Proportions of real costs provided by the state could vary from 100 per cent for top priority programmes to some determined minimum.

Competition for quality students and their money will have a marvelous effect on the institutions offering tertiary education, from revamping programme offerings to match market needs to customer service. The usual sinking or swimming, mixing and merging will take place, as in regular business, to the benefit of student clients and the country.

Academics and their student clients, cloned in their image, are generally terrified of the market. The worry that civilising, non-technical education will get shafted is unfounded. The liberal arts have enormous 'market value' when bundled with the servile practical arts. Renowned management guru Peter Drucker famously proclaimed management to be the new liberal art.

In his book, The New Realities, and elsewhere in his copious writings, Drucker wrote: "Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal art-'liberal' because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; 'art' because it is practice and application. Managers draw on all the knowledge and insights of the humanities and the social sciences - on psychology and philosophy, on economics and history, on the physical sciences and ethics. But they have to focus this knowledge on effectiveness and results - on healing a sick patient, teaching a student, building a bridge, designing and selling a user-friendly software programme. [Management] will increasingly be the discipline and the practice through which the 'humanities' acquire recognition, impact and relevance."

I teach elements of the liberal arts to MBA students, who cheerfully pay market rates for their programme as a rational investment and who must complete non-credit soft skills courses before they get to touch the technical stuff which the soft skills intellectually prepares them to handle. Many students have later freely acknowledged that the foundation skills course was the best and most transformative part of their graduate business administration course.

The minister must not repeat at the tertiary level the injustice foisted upon secondary schools which have been starved of state subsidy, are forced to offer 'free education', and can only collect ancilliary fees if parents volunteer to pay, but must offer quality education. Fees, subsidies and loans at the tertiary level must realistically reflect the real cost of education. The only questions being, who pays and how?

The just and fair diversion of education subventions to the base and middle of the system must be accompanied by considerations of return on investment and accountability by administration and teaching staff in the system. Dr. Omar Davies, as finance minister, raised the return-on-investment (ROI) question but, in the face of opposition by entrenched and powerful interest groups, lost the courage to pursue the answer. With even more money heading in that direction, the ROI and accountability questions must be raised.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com