by TONY BEST

BARBADOS is urging Caribbean countries to throw their full backing behind plans for an "open university" type of campus for the University of the West Indies (UWI).

At the same time Prime Minister David Thompson, chairman of the UWI Grants Committee, has warned that the region's premier tertiary level educational institution may face increasing pressure from private American schools which want to attract some of the brightest and best students to their campuses.

He also showered praise on Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the Cave Hill Campus, for what he termed his "aggressive" and "unorthodox" approach to expanding the campus in Barbados and finding the money to finance its growth.

The open university campus is being championed by Professor Nigel Harris, UWI Vice-Chancellor, in order to open up the university to more students, especially those in non-campus territories in the Eastern Caribbean.

Support needed

Thompson said in New York that the idea needed full backing from the various countries because it would make the school even more relevant to the region as a whole.

"In relation to the university's reach, we need to acknowledge that our university is going to come under even more threat from private universities, particularly out of the United States," he warned.

In addition, he said, more people in the Caribbean might turn to the open university model in Britain to acquire degrees.

"At the end of the day, the university has to find some mechanism for self-financing," he asserted.

"The only way it can do that is if its programme becomes more relevant to our population.

Positive but costly

"I think the open university certainly will have a very positive impact. I know there are people who have romantic views about people from the region going to a university campus."

But there were some practical considerations, he indicated. Although attending classes at any of the three campuses in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago or Barbados provided students with a "very positive" experience, Thompson insisted that a hard fact of life was that it was becoming increasingly costly to do so.

"The reality is that having travelled to one of the three campuses has become a more and more expensive exercise and it is not competitive," was the way he put it.

That was why the open university concept was attractive and "is the way forward", he added.

"I think the concept of the open university is something we should support fully," Thompson declared.

Turning to Cave Hill, the Prime Minister, a graduate of the UWI, said that considerable investment had gone into the campus in Barbados in recent years and he complimented Sir Hilary "for using a very aggressive and less orthodox approach to raising finances for the university".

Most CARICOM leaders of the past decade attended or taught at the UWI.