The University of Guyana (UG) should be transformed into a world-class, top-tier research institution with Guyana’s oil windfall, former professor Dr. David Hinds has stated, warning that the government’s current spending priorities are affecting the nation’s premier tertiary institution.
Despite requesting $21 billion to effectively run its programmes, UG was allocated only $14.5 billion in this year’s national budget, while the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL), a People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government initiative, received $5.8 billion. Dr. Hinds condemned the move, saying it diverts resources from building local capacity and subsidises foreign universities instead of investing in Guyana’s own institution.
“The University of Guyana should become top tier and transformed into a research 1 institution. We should pump money into that university, so that the young people are using the oil money to anticipate what will happen when oil is no longer king. And we are talking about renewable energy. Free tuition, excellent, but what you want is that free tuition must not mean a substandard education.”
Dr. Hinds said lecturers need access to journals, conferences, and research funding to maintain a world-class university. “The lecturers at the university should have access to journals the lecturers at the university should be able to go to conferences funded by the university, where they meet with their peers and they discuss what is happening in their field. There is not enough money for that.”
Urging the government to redirect funding from GOAL to UG, he said, “UG is your big baby. Slash that money. Put that into the university, let that money circulate here in Guyana rather than that money going to some university in India or the United Kingdom. What we are doing is subsidising foreign universities and not subsidising our own university.”
With oil revenues at historic levels, Dr. Hinds warned that failing to invest in UG now could mean Guyana never has another chance to build a world-class, research-focused university.
Dr. Hinds argued that the GOAL programme, while valuable, should operate through UG rather than sending money abroad. “What you are doing, when you set up this Guyana Online Academy of Learning, is that you are taking foreign money to pay foreign universities for an education that you get here at the University of Guyana. Give UG the money, let UG set up the online classes. Keep the GOAL, but let it go through the University of Guyana. That is how you build up your stock because we may never have the chance again if oil crashes in the next 10 years and the revenue from oil stops coming.”
He also criticsed the PPP government for reversing decades of investment in UG, contrasting it with past administrations. “In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the University of Guyana was populated with lecturers who were connected to the WPA, and PPP. But the PNC never stopped pumping money into that university. What this PPP government has done is that it has said the people at the university and what we are going to do is defund that university and turn it into nothing,” he said. (Release)
