There’s been some timely and necessary public discussion this past week on the true status, stability and sustainability of the Caribbean’s university education system.
The discourse followed recent disclosure that student enrolment is falling at the University of the West Indies (The UWI).
In April 2026, UWI’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, speaking at the AFUWI Awards/Gala in New York City, said the university has seen a dip of 2,000 in enrolment across its five campuses, mainly driven by poverty.
He also said there had been a total reduction from 50,000 students to 48,000.
“This is of concern to us,” the Vice Chancellor admitted.
“So-far,” he continued, “our analysis has shown that the primary cause of this is poverty, (which is) an existential threat.”
Many students have not been able to complete their degrees, Sir Hilary added, indicating too that “The campuses have reported that some students have had to drop out of their degree programmes because they could not afford to carry on.”
Dr Anthony Gonzales, a former Director of the UWI’s Institute of International Relations (IIR), offered another set of explanations for the dwindling enrolment numbers.
He told the Trinidad & Tobago press he believes “proliferation of institutions that offer university-level courses and degrees” is a major factor, among others.
The discussion on education also comes follows recent misplaced claims in Saint Lucia that classrooms were shrinking – which Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre and Education Minister Kenson Casimir disproved with facts and figures.
As it also turns out, university education and enrolment are also down in Europe and the USA, where important discussions and decisions are taking place and being made after thorough national assessments at the end of the First Quarter of Century 21.
UK universities, for example, are facing funding crises over foreign student decreases.
Per reports, Britain’s universities are firing staff, cutting courses and curtailing research over an intensifying financial shortfall.
Prior changes to the country’s higher education system has expanded access while reducing government support, thereby increasing institutions’ reliance on fees — particularly from international students — to generate revenue.
Successive UK governments have, however, sought to curb foreign student numbers to cut immigration, hammering universities’ funds.
Critics say that ultimately, Britain offers neither the benefits of the US system of well-endowed, fee-paying universities, nor of far cheaper European offerings.
Britain attempted to make an accelerated transition from an elite to a mass system of higher education, but clearly without reckoning the consequences of such a huge structural change.
On the other hand, students today are being found everywhere to be veritably and demonstrably more-dull than their parents – less-able to read, write and count without devices — and their retention span is measured today by online posts and seconds.
Sweden, for example, has ordered an entire revamp of its digital approach to education after coming to certain painful realizations of the extent of unexpected negative results of making a blanket replacement instead of taking a phased approach to introduction of new changes.
But while the number of international students heading to the US is also on the downside these days – especially since the Trump Administration’s crackdown on foreign students from particular developing nations – American students are still grappling with mounting school debts they cannot pay.
Similarly, the global unemployment crisis is such that in many nations – including but not limited to the Caribbean and the Global South – that university grads and other qualified persons have to take lower-paying jobs or remain unemployed.
But American students are no-longer flocking to Indian universities, especially since COVID, with Indian analysts attributing the “low university rankings” to “rigid curriculum”.
Recent figures published in New Delhi indicate that, in the year 2023-24, of the 2.9 million US students studying abroad, only 1,578 chose India.
Notably, India is the biggest source of foreign students in the US and in 2004-05 – a decade earlier — 1,767 American students chose to study in India, placing the country among the top 25 study-abroad destinations for US citizens.
That interest continued to grow at a steady pace and by 2011-12, the number more-than-doubled to 4,593 students, making India the 12th most-popular destination for higher education, just behind countries like Japan and Argentina.
The increase kept its pace until it entered a decline phase in 2016-17, a plunge that was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2019-20, the number of American students in India fell by half — and by 2020-21, it stood at a mere 16.
In contrast, over 3.6 million Indian students are currently studying in the US, comprising 30.8 per cent of the international student population there.
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is starting to see sure signs of the same realities now dawning earlier across the world, including limiting children’s online access and returning books to classrooms.
But today’s students are wired quite-differently, as being reminded by a popular online music video about a ‘Mad Party!’ organized by students of a prominent Saint Lucia secondary school.
The psychology of learning is millions of years old, while computerization and digitization are just recent arrival and now found to be crippling children’s ability to exercise general motoring of their mind skills, condemning them to eternal underdevelopment through dependence on devices.
Like learning to walk before attending nursery or infant school, Caribbean students also need more and better target and specialized early-childhood education and care at home.
As Sir Arthur Lewis often reminded: The cure to poverty is not money but education.
So, as the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) celebrates its 40th Anniversary this year, it’s important to reiterate the realization today that education is not a task for teachers and students alone.
Instead, it must integrally involve the wider society of parents, communities and national institutions — all dedicated to ensuring stated goals for education are given real life and meaning across the Global South.
It’s now, or never…