Why pay fees

IF THE VISION of late Prime Minister Errol Barrow was one of the middle class of Barbados never taking responsibility for themselves, then it was a flawed vision, said Minister of Education Ronald Jones.
In a more than two-hour presentation yesterday during the St George South branch meeting in Greens Pavilion, Drax Hall, St George, Jones outlined Government’s position concerning charging students of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill campus the cost of their tuition while giving a detailed history of education in Barbados.
“I am concerned about those who truly don’t understand what was Errol Barrow’s vision. If [his] vision was a constant, unending vision that the middle class would not, at some time, take full charge for them and their families, then it would have been a fractured vision.
“Five years after the university was formed, Errol Barrow said the cost of tertiary education is too high and the university has to find a way of reaching to the people so that the people themselves would not turn on the university. None of us in the Cabinet and Government of Barbados would have asked the families and students to make a contribution [if] the situation was not as it is now. I tell you that for a fact,” he said, noting the cost per student was $2 800 then compared with $33 000 now.