PRIME Minister Bruce Golding indicated Thursday that in the future students pursuing programmes considered vital to the country’s development will be preferred in applying for loans from the Students Loan Bureau (SLB).

At the same time he urged university students to choose areas of study for their marketability, and not because they are popular.

“When you are selecting your courses of study you paid no attention to what is the market asking for, what kind of jobs will their be for what I am studying,” Golding commented about some university graduates who are experiencing difficulty finding employment.

“The passport to getting a job is not simply getting a diploma; it is acquiring the skills that are going to be marketable,” he said.

“You have a whole lot of people studying business practices and marketing, a whole lot of people studying law. The most popular one these days is mass communication. You have more people with degrees in mass communication than the mass that they are to communicate with,” he quipped.

“I am very insistent that the Government has a responsibility to start to direct the resources.

“If you want to access resources on terms that are preferential, then you must understand that those who are making the funds available have an investment in ensuring that you study something that is useful, something that the country needs”, Golding stated.

Speaking at the Caribbean Maritime Institute’s (CMI) graduation ceremony at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, the prime minister said he had already had discussions on the matter with SLB executive director Lenice Barnett.

Using himself as an example, Golding admitted that he did Religious Knowledge at A Level in high school because he enjoyed it, and not because of of its marketability.

He lauded the CMI for introducing areas of training that are in great demand and for offering them not only to students in the region but from all over the world as well.

In his address, CMI executive director Fritz Pinnock highlighted the many partnerships the institution had developed with shipping companies across the globe.

The official programme showed 148 students graduating with bachelors and associate degrees and diplomas in disciplines including logistics and supply chain management, port management, international shipping, industrial engineering, industrial systems operations and maintenance, navigational watch and engine room watch.