UWI campuses to expand

The growing demand for university education in the Caribbean has the three campuses of the University of the West Indies bursting at their seams.{{more}}

So much so that the Cave Hill, Mona and St. Augustine campuses are soon to expand to accommodate the hunger for knowledge.

According to Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies Professor Nigel Harris, attendance has grown by more than 100% over the last five years and is expected to continue growing for years to come.

Harris credited this growth to a number of factors, including the number of scholarships being offered by the University in recent times, close to 100 per year, as well as the push by some governments to have more University educated persons in every household.

To a lesser extent, students from the international community are enrolling in the region.

According to Harris, the Barbados government has already provided the UWI with another 30 acres of land, and in Western Jamaica, plans are being made for the construction of a new campus, while over 100 acres of land have already been allotted for construction in Trinidad and Tobago.

Harris said that the University administration does not see a drop off in attendance when the proposed open campus comes on stream.

The open or virtual campus, which will cater to persons who are unable to attend any of the three campuses, is expected to take shape as early as next year.

He believes that there will still be robust demand for the actual campuses, especially from students from Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

He lamented, however, that there is a slight fall in the number of persons attending the schools of continuing studies, especially in the OECS, which may be due to poor marketing of the courses available there.

There are close to 38,000 students enrolled in the three major campuses, over 600 of them are Vincentians.