Congratulations are in order for the thousands who graduated on Tuesday from the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) which is one of the major programmes launched by the PPP/C administration in its 2020 to 2025 term.
With a further 3,876 Guyanese graduating, the total number of scholarships awarded since the initiative’s launch in 2021 now stands at 54,793.
The latest graduating class also included the first 35 doctoral graduates produced under the programme, a milestone Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance Dr Ashni Singh described as “a source of immense personal, governmental, and national pride.”
Addressing the fourth GOAL graduation ceremony at the National Cultural Centre on behalf of President Irfaan Ali, Mr Singh said the scale and diversity of this year’s graduating class underscored the programme’s rapid growth and national reach.
“And we are graduating these 3,876 persons who comprise an immensely diverse demographic across gender, across geography, across discipline—subject matter discipline, across institutions, and indeed, across every other criterion that you could possibly imagine”, he asserted.
The graduating class included 2,858 women and 1,018 men. Among them were 1,150 graduates from the Guyana Retraining and Orientation for Online Learning (GROW) programme, 396 bachelor’s degree recipients, 836 master’s degree graduates and 35 doctoral graduates.
Education Minister Sonia Parag, in remarks delivered at the ceremony and in a statement she made on the Ministry of Education’s Facebook page, said the graduating class reflected the programme’s success in widening access to higher education across all regions and social groups.
She said the graduates include teachers, nurses, public servants, entrepreneurs, parents, young professionals and other lifelong learners drawn from every administrative region.
No matter the throughput emanating from this laudable quest to improve the educational level of thousands of Guyanese there are serious questions and reservations to be addressed.
For a programme that is costing the country hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to the educational institutions that are offering the courses and the administrative side of things, PPP/C governments are still to explain why these resources have not been plowed into Guyana’s premier tertiary institution, the University of Guyana (UG). The birth of UG and its role in educating thousands here has been a source of immense pride. Yet, our tertiary institution is not funded at the level that can ensure lecturers with higher degrees, the upgrading of all faculties, staying abreast of cutting edge technologies and the provision of basic services and amenities. There are certainly ongoing and continuous improvements which the UG administration must be applauded for. Yet, much better can be done and certainly the money being assigned to GOAL – a sign of the uncalibrated and unexamined spending of this country’s oil revenues – could have significantly improved the standing of UG. The government’s intention to discharge the country’s wealth into institutions overseas as opposed to bolstering Guyana’s own university must be cogently explained by this government.
Second, no programme of the scale of GOAL can proceed without an independent examination of its expenditure, decision-making and effectiveness. While PPP/C governments are notoriously disinclined to have independent examination of their major spending, this is one programme that must be subject to forensic scrutiny and this matter should be pursued by the opposition in Parliament and the Economic Services Committee if the government shows no interest in this. It should also be borne in mind that US$1.5 million had to be refunded to the GOAL programme after one of its intermediaries falsely claimed that courses were tenable at the University of Staffordshire in the UK.
Third, the effectiveness of all of these degrees, doctoral awards and everything else in between must be evaluated to determine whether Guyanese are getting value for money. These days it is easy to append a series of qualifications to one’s name but does it in effect mean that you are more marketable and can now earn higher pay? Are you in a position to remove yourself from the job market and create jobs. The perfect ground exists for University of Guyana students and civil society groups, with the help of the government, to track the fortunes of the first two cohorts of graduates. How have they done in this economy that is so dominated by oil? Are they still here? Have they founds jobs in their field of recent specialization. Have they moved on to something else? Was the GOAL experience enriching?
These are the questions that have to be answered after the heady feeling of achievement in government circles.
Discussion