Island hopping: life at the West Indies’ multi-country university

Juggling the various views and ideas at a university council meeting must be taxing at the best of times, but when those present include a country’s education secretary, and sometimes even a prime minister, an extra level of coordination is required.

That is something experienced regularly at the University of the West Indies, a public university serving 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean. It is one of only two multi-country, regional universities in the world: the other is the University of the South Pacific.

Richard Bernal, the university’s pro vice-chancellor for global affairs, told Times Higher Education that these kinds of top-level meetings, at a university that spans nations from Belize to Trinidad and Tobago, “take a lot of planning and a lot of management”.

“There’s goodwill there, everyone is for higher education. Just everyone wants more of it and better,” he said.

The difficulties for the university, which has campuses in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados, and also offers online courses, is “the synchronisation and standardisation of procedures and of course the logistics”, he said. “We are doing more and more online but for some meetings you have to physically be there…and we have to make sure it is one university.”

There are plans for more campuses, however. “We have been approached by some countries that don’t have a physical campus that would like one. We are in the process of assessing them…but we have to make sure that in these times, when governments are financially constrained, that it is affordable and financially viable,” said Dr Bernal.

Government funding for higher education is an issue around the world, but UWI’s governmental funding comes from several administrations.

Just like in the UK, the financing of higher education has shifted in the Caribbean, said Dr Bernal, who previously served as Jamaica’s ambassador to the US. “There were days when governments provided all the money; since the financial crisis of 2008 Caribbean countries have been increasingly constrained on the fiscal side. We’re growing, so we’ve had to do more in terms of fees, which we do need to keep low, but the governments that fund us are restricted.”

Dr Bernal is not critical of the position of these national governments. “They’ve been good to us for 70 years…they will eventually come back into a better position,” he continued.

The university was founded in 1948 as an external college of the University of London and while it is now wholly independent, it retains a good relationship with the UK, Dr Bernal said. However, after Brexit, UWI “will need to pay more attention to Europe, as we went into some of our main European initiatives alongside the UK,” he said. “But Brexit or no Brexit, we have a long-standing relationship with the UK, separate from Europe. There won't be any damage to that.”

The university’s ability to work across different nations and governments – with different priorities – has proved an important strength as the university aims to position itself in a global setting. “Because we’re a multi-country university, what is regional is actually a form of international interaction. So going global is a natural path,” according to Dr Bernal.

The university’s plans to expand globally were crystallised two years ago in the creation of Dr Bernal’s post, devoted to globalisation. “We already have people from all over the world, but our numbers are small – 3 per cent of the student body – so we are looking to do more,” he said.

The university will also soon open its Global Centre for Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management, which will provide advice and crisis management in the face of global disasters caused by climate change that affect tourism, economies and livelihoods, as well as conduct research into prevention and resilience.

That centre, in collaboration with the UN and international university partners, will be based at UWI in Jamaica but will be global in its operation, Dr Bernal said. “Many of the destinations that depend heavily on tourism are in the tropics…but we are seeing more numbers of natural disasters and of a greater intensity, such stronger hurricanes. They are spreading, it’s a global issue.” he added.

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com