Universities brace for fallout from funding programme review

Fewer citizens of Trinidad and Tobago are attending higher education institutions as the changes to the Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses (GATE) programme has meant the door is closed for some of them and the country’s universities are bracing for the potential fallout of government’s planned review of the programme, writes Kyron Regis for the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian.

The Sunday Business Guardian reached out to several providers of tertiary education and all admit that since people have to do a means test to qualify for GATE and since it is not in the main available to people doing postgraduate studies, institutions have seen their funding drastically reduced.

Now the government has cut TT$35 million (US$5 million) from university funding and is to review the operations of the scheme. Added to the challenges posed by the general state of the economy as a result of COVID-19, this has caused serious worry for many institutions.
Full report on the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian site