A UNIVERSITY education cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

Independent Senator Velma Newton gave the warning in the Senate yesterday during the final day of the three-day debate on the Appropriation Bill 2008.

Newton, who is law librarian at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, said it was important to look at investment in education in a comprehensive way as it was not just a capital outlay in a product called certification, but about the advanced development of the citizen, poverty alleviation, community upliftment, defeating the colonial legacy, skills advancement for the productive sectors, crime reduction, social stability, cultural integrity and psychological well-being.

The senator added people should not speak of "diminishing returns" at the Cave Hill Campus when Barbados had not yet reached the critical mass necessary for developed nation status.

It was an apparent reference to comments Wednesday by Leader of Public Business in the Upper Chamber Senator Maxine McClean, who also said students were using Cave Hill at a "last resort" after failing to get into Sixth Form schools and other tertiary institutions.

Newton suggested this campus was no different from others which attracted students who chose to go to university because they did not know what they wanted to do.

On criticisms of the quality of student output, Newton said many of the problems with which some graduates left Cave Hill were ones they entered with: faulty grammar, inability to spell properly, and the inability to express themselves well.

She said the university had implemented remedial and other programmes with the hope that students would leave in a better state than when they entered.

Common letters

Newton said they did not always work because today university education was competing with countervailing influences such as the texting of messages in which one used common letters and no punctuation.

"And, unfortunately, some students may know better but by constant use of the wrong thing, even in official correspondence, you will find text language," she added.

Newton, now in her ninth consecutive year in the Upper Chamber, reiterated a point she had made previously about people saying the university was getting too much money, and that there were diminishing returns and that the university was not meeting its objectives.

"A university education cannot be measured in dollars and cents," she stressed, "no matter where the university is located. And remember that successive Governments have committed themselves to free tertiary education and are involved in the discussions which take place to determine the university's programmes and needs."

That would be the time if a Government was dissatisfied with the university's programmes for it to say something, she said.

"He who pays the piper usually calls the tune," Newton said.