A serious concern in Jamaica’s tertiary institutions is the number of students who are unable to sit their exams or for whom graduation is delayed due to non-payment of their tuition fees.

Yanique Baker, 22, an accounting student at the University of the West Indies Western Jamaica Campus, faced this challenge and feared she would not be able to graduate in November

this year.

Baker, though, was fortunate to receive a bursary from the university’s student assistance fund which helped her in satisfying her financial obligation to the university. The funds Baker received were raised from a bazaar hosted last year that netted over $300,000 to aid a number of students who had been unable to access their results or sit exams because their accounts were in arrears.

That initiative spurred Michele English, president and CEO of Columbus Communications in Jamaica, operators of Flow, to match the $300,000, taking the fund’s total to $600,000.

Recently, Baker expressed relief at the assistance, saying that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders for her final year.

“As it relates to school expenses, my challenges were similar to what many of my peers still face,” she said. “A portion of my tuition was already paid, but it would take more time than what was allowed in order to clear the balance. That meant I would be blocked from accessing the resources that I needed to study, and later, even barred from writing my exams.”

Being barred from exams is the distressing culmination of the financial challenges that tertiary students in Jamaica face daily. Other challenges, Baker said, include on-time payment of tuition fees, buying textbooks, finding taxi fare to get to school, medical bills, and securing a job.

“Final-year students worry daily about finding a job so that they can repay their student loan, etc,” she said. “However, these problems could be alleviated with assistance from members of parliament who should make it one of their major projects to assist tertiary-level students to offset these expenses each year. Additionally, there should be more bursaries available to students from the

private sector.”

In recognition of those difficulties, Flow decided to help with the staging of its Flow MoBay City Run 10K/5K Road Race.

The event has become a beacon of hope for tertiary students from western Jamaica.

“I think the Flow MoBay City Run is an excellent initiative that will be beneficial to many students,” said Baker. “There are many ambitious, hard-working, high achievers who possess the right drive to go forward with their tertiary education but are financially deprived. The Flow MoBay City Run is like a ray of hope to the less fortunate among us, who are the majority in Jamaica.”

Baker commended the work of the UWI Western Jamaica Campus (WJC) which, she said, has extended much effort to aid struggling students who are delinquent in paying their fees.

“Students at WJC are privileged to apply for student assistant jobs on campus and also to the WJC student assistance fund, which opens at the beginning of every semester,” she said.

“I can attest to all these options. In my final year I was having a major challenge in finding the entire tuition fee at once. I made use of any opportunity I got and applied for any scholarship/bursary that was open. I received a loan from the UWI Mona Credit Union and also received a bursary from the Office of Student Financing. I also received a bursary from NCB, which is open to

tertiary students every year,”

Baker said.

After completing her undergraduate degree in November, Baker hopes to pursue her Master’s degree in either entrepreneurship or finance, but until then, she is eager to help students who find themselves in the position that she has been in.

“My friends and I are willing to assist students and align ourselves with initiatives such as the Flow MoBay City Run and any other new scholarship and grant programmes,” she said. “Many of the students are ambitious, bright and talented but are simply unable to meet their expenses for various reasons, and this is what makes the Flow MoBay City Run important.”

This year, 20 per cent of students registered to take exams at the campus of one of the tertiary institutions in Montego Bay are at risk of being barred because of

a balance on their

tuition account.

Statisticians have said that the most competitive cities in the world boast a population of more than 50 per cent having tertiary education.

Education Minister Ronald Thwaites has articulated the vision of doubling the cohort of students in the country’s tertiary institutions from the current 40,000 by the

year 2020.