They've got classrooms and they've got teachers, more of both than ever before, but now Belize's educators are asking, "is the education relevant," and if not, "how can it be made so?" Those are the questions driving a tertiary education summit that's being staged over the next two days. And today at the opening the over-riding goal was to figure out a way to make these many, disparate institutions work collectively towards a single goal of national development.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
A cross section of interested parties, educators and policy makers gathered at the national tertiary education conference to examine four critical areas: accreditation, financing, good governance and performance measurement. Prime Minister Said Musa who gave the keynote address said tertiary education is a key to development.
Rt. Hon. Said Musa, Prime Minister
"At the heart of all our development efforts is the creation of an environment in which people can realize their full potential and lead productive and creative lives. People are the real wealth of nations. Every country in every region of the world has its strengths and its weaknesses. All of us are in need of reform to some degree. To what degree is there is a sense of national solidarity and a focus on development. To what degree is there trust within the society. To what degree there are shared vision and a willingness to pull together and sacrifice for the sake of national development. What role does higher education and the University of Belize in particular have to play in all this? It surely cannot be to create an intellectual cadre of elites, divorced from their community and society nor can it be to cultivate a distinct culture of distrust and negativity that leads to a climate of skepticism and cynicism which assumes a life of its own as every action in public life is credited with the most questionable and outrageous motive. We cannot build a nation to its full potential where the best lack all conviction and the worse are full of passionate intensity."
And while the Prime Minister sampled liberally from Yeats, he made his point: that to keep things form falling apart, institutions must believe in something to thrive. Minister of Education Francis Fonseca says that lofty goal can be achieved through full consultation.
Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"Tertiary level institutions, while we are producing students and enrollment is increasing and more of our students and more of the Belizean population is getting higher education, there is a sense of disconnect between that education and the national development goals of the country. So there is a real need for us to sit down and say these are our higher education goals and how do these goals reflect the needs of the country."
And while there may be that disconnect, Fonseca says that a forum like this will hopefully create common goals among tertiary level educational institutions.
Hon. Francis Fonseca,
"At the University of Belize many people are concerned that we are producing too many students with business administration degrees and while we don't want to discourage students from higher learning and pursuing business administration, we need to sit down as a nation and determine what can we afford, what is in the best interest of the country. I think that is what this discussion is all about, ensuring that all these institutions, while have some good core programs, ensuring that those programs really reflect the needs of our country as well as ensuring that those programs are providing the proper skills and proper knowledge and information to the students who are in those programs so that when they come out of those programs, they can find jobs and they can contribute positively to the growth and development of the country."
But without discussion, that's virtually impossible. Brenda Armstrong is the Dean of Wesley College sixth form. She says that tertiary institutions have been left to flounder, without centralized direction or a shared mission.
Brenda Armstrong, Wesley College
"Tertiary education has been one of the areas that has been neglected for a little while and we hope that over these next two days, we will be able to devote some special attention to it, for us to examine ourselves, examine our institutions, see where we have been going wrong, and perhaps charting a away forward. We can pool our energies, direct our thoughts to facing the challenges that tertiary level institutions face right now. Institutions like Wesley Junior College that are new in this business must rely on the experience and the years of investment that has taken place in other institutions. Our students can work along with other students, our faculties. And I must say that as an Association of Tertiary Level Institutions in Belize, that is exactly what we do. We build quality assurance. Together we have committees that work on things like that and I believe this conference will just cement that kind of effort for Belize. It is difficult to meet the needs of the country while satisfying the wishes and desires of the student population. It is a challenge for us as the heads of institutions to encourage students to go into the areas that the country of Belize needs. We can only support so many business persons, so many accountants, and then at the same time we are direly in need of social science personnel and social science workers and people in the field of education for things like geography and the history and even the sciences, physics and so on. And so I think that somehow or another we have to make those programs attractive."
Corinth Morter Lewis is the President of the University of Belize, she agrees that schools should attract students. But more than attracting them, they must identify what these students need.
Corinth Morter-Lewis, UB
"We need guidance. We need the Ministry of National Development to say these are priority areas and once that is decided on, what happens then is to encourage students to go into these areas because if we give scholarships in those areas, if we help the students to go into nursing, go into agriculture, if we offer scholarships in those areas, students will go there. I think when it is left to them to make a choice, then it becomes less of what we want as a country and more of what the student wants and they are basing their choice on what they do on more general and not particularly important reasons and issues for making the choices that they do. I think we can, as a country, help our students. If you want more engineers then you give scholarships in engineering and you let the students know if you want a scholarship this is an area we are focusing on and the student I think will go that path but I think when it is left to the students to find their won funds to get them into education or get them into programs, their selection will be less about what the country needs and more about their personal reasons for choosing it."
On this day if we were to judge by what these students of Sacred Heart Junior College presented from their food and beverage component of their tourism management course proves that proper guidance is key to excellent performance in just about any area of education and by extension national development.
At the end of this morning's opening ceremony, Taiwanese Ambassador Joseph Shih made it one heck of an after-party, he gave the Prime Minister a check for over $900,000 to help the cash strapped government meet its most pressing tertiary demand, the registration fees for the University of Belize. As we reported, facing mass student disapproval, UB agreed to withdraw an increase in registration fees. The Taiwanese donation will now be used to cover that and to lend some assistance to the regional language center.
