A section of the University of the West Indies, Mona, campus. - File
Administrators at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies have scoffed at claims that the faculties of law and medical sciences are reserved for the children of the rich and the famous.
While outlining several measures being implemented to assist the financially needy, the university has also claimed that it has implemented measures to increase the number of students admitted each year.
These include a system whereby, in addition to the students whose tuition fees are subsidised by Government to the tune of 80 per cent, there is scope for persons to enter the faculties by paying the full economic cost.
"The full-fee programme has not denied access to any Jamaican. On the contrary, it has increased the number of available places to Jamaican students.
"For some 40 years, the Faculty of Medical Sciences admitted approximately 100 students per year. Of this intake, 55 spaces were reserved for Jamaicans, with the Government of Jamaica paying 80 per cent of their fees. For the 2009-2010 academic year, the faculty admitted 133 Jamaican students, the most ever admitted in an academic year," Carroll Edwards, public relations officer at the campus, told The Gleaner.
Efforts to increase capacity
"The full-fee programme has, therefore, made it possible for the faculty to make available additional, self-sponsored places for any student, including Jamaicans. Were it not for the full-fee programme, many of the persons who are now in the programme, or who have graduated, would not have been able to study medicine," added Edwards.
It is a similar story in the faculty of law where efforts are under way to increase the capacity at the campuses in Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica.
"Traditionally, UWI intake from Jamaica has been 40 students who are subsidised by Government subventions and take their first year at Mona and transfer to Cave Hill for the final two years of the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) programme," said Edwards.
"However, effective September 2009, the University of the West Indies began to deliver the undergraduate law degree at the Mona campus.
Under this arrangement, the Mona campus has admitted a further 100 students who will spend the entire three years pursuing the degree at Mona; approximately 30 of those students will take their first year at the Western Jamaica Campus of UWI, Mona, transferring to the Mona campus for the final two years."
This means that there is more scope for Jamaican students leaving secondary schools who want to go on to careers in medicine or law, according to Edwards.