THE ‘feminisation’ of the region’s premier tertiary education institution – the University of the West Indies (UWI) – is continuing in earnest, with males accounting for only 18 per cent of the new students registered at the Mona campus for the 2007/08 academic year.

The population at the institution is also getting more youthful. According to UWI Mona’s new principal, Professor Gordon Shirley, 68 per cent of the new students registered were 20 years old or younger, compared to 56 per cent of those who fell into that age group last year.

Shirley, who was addressing students at the university’s matriculation and welcome ceremony last Thursday, also noted that the number of new students had grown from 1,800 last year to 2,300 this year.

Underscoring what he described as the “incontestably high standard” of the institution, Shirley noted that “the UWI degree is the standard of excellence in education in the (Caribbean) region”.

Meanwhile, the principal noted that as part of the strategic reform of UWI, there would be an overhaul of the entire curriculum over the next two to three years. The recommendations coming out of this reform process, he said, would be implemented a year after its completion.

The principal encouraged the new students to pursue graduate programmes at UWI on the completion of their degrees.

Also speaking at the function was UWI Vice Chancellor, Professor E Nigel Harris, who expressed dissatisfaction at the level of integration among students from the different campuses.

To help address this, the vice chancellor said that the university had developed the Caribbean Integration Programme, which would allow students registered at the Mona campus to spend up to one semester at another UWI campus, doing courses in keeping with their programme of study.

He noted that during the last academic year, more than 38,000 students were enrolled across the entire university, which opened its doors with 33 medical students at Mona in 1948.

Beyond that, Harris said that the number of students enrolled at UWI had grown by 100 per cent in the last five years, and that the Mona and St Augustine campuses were about equal in their number of students.

Long-time campus registrar, Anthony Falloon, used the occasion to announce his retirement, and introduced to the gathering the new campus registrar, Dr Camille Bell-Hutchinson, who chaired the programme.