Over the last five or so years it has become commonplace to see stories in the traditional and social media about a child or young adult whose dreams are about to be dashed because they have no money to pay for their undergraduate degree. These stories usually come at the start of the academic year and are often cast in a way to tug at your heart, causing you to feel sad, concerned, angry even, all at once. Some of these stories come with a plea for help, with a bank or GoFundMe account, or contact details attached, just in case your emotions spur you into action.

With the opening up of the full-fee-paying undergraduate degree programmes in medicine and law at several local universities, and the resulting democratic access to these once-elitist and artificially shrunken careers, these stories have reached deafening proportions. If we should believe them, the majority of these bright, but poor young people opened their eyes to the world and dreamt that they would become lawyers and doctors — those hyped careers that are sold as guaranteed routes to personal and economic success and social mobility.

The truth is, bright children from poor families are sold this dream early. You will become a lawyer, or a doctor, because you are bright. Usually, no one is clear on who will pay for the education that will guarantee them this wonderful future.

So who should pay?

This is a conversation that is long overdue. At Jamaica’s publicly funded tertiary institutions the people of this country — through a combination of taxes, grant-in-aid, loan repayments and penalties — now absorb more than 60 per cent of tuition fees (moving from a high of full funding through to 70 per cent of tuition in an earlier era) for programmes that are sponsored under the University Grants Committee (UGC) programme. But even with straight ones in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination subjects, not everyone gets into the limited number of UGC-funded medicine and law options, as the demand continues to far outstrip supply.

Additionally, economic and social pressures mean that public universities have begun to engage with more full-fee-paying options, with fees ranging from a low of US$3,000 per academic year to a high of over US$10,000 for many of these programmes. With more than 40 per cent of the population now able to access university education, it is time for an open discussion about funding tertiary education.

As a child from a poor home in rural Jamaica, when my ‘government scholarship’ years at St Jago High were cut short by teenage pregnancy, I was forced to rearrange my then non-existent plans for tertiary education. Looking back, this was actually a good thing. By the time I arrived at The University of the West Indies in 1993 to pursue my undergraduate degree, I was a full-time, working adult, carrying significant financial responsibilities for my family.

I also used a combination of my little savings, scholarships, and grants to assist me to complete my undergraduate degree. And there was that summer when I worked abroad and used all those resources to help me and my family stay afloat during my final year of full-time study. These (student loans, savings, scholarships, grants and summer work) combined are formidable resources that parents and their children (or young adults) can target and harness.

The tuition for the four years of my undergraduate degree was funded entirely by the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB). In today’s Jamaica, the SLB remains the best option for funding tertiary education. Today, its loan offerings are unbeaten by any financial institution. Of note is the fact that the SLB is projected to disburse approximately $5.2 billion for this 2019/20 academic year, moving from $4.2 billion disbursed for 2018/19 and $3.9 billion for 2017/18.

SLB received 13,749 applicants in 2018/19 and disbursed to just over 10,000 students; and in 2017/18 out of the 13,643 applicants, again just over 10,000 received loans. In the USA, college debt now exceeds US$1.5 trillion with over 43 million student loan borrowers.

In today’s buoyant financial sector, every single financial institution in Jamaica (commercial bank, credit union, etc) offers a range of products geared towards long-term savings — and I don’t mean insurance — that can help to defray the costs associated with tertiary education. Several of these are specifically targeted to families who have a desire to begin planning and saving very early, maybe 15-20 years ahead, for their child’s/children’s education.

You would be surprised at how compounding the interest on a small sum, with regular monthly investments of another smaller sum, can add up over 10, 15, or 20 years. Others offer special loans for tertiary education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. These are resources that must be mined.

The greatest “no cost” options for funding tertiary education in Jamaica exist in the land of scholarships and grants. Since there is really no “free good”, the main costs attached include actually having to apply for these benefits and maintaining the grade point average that is a requirement for holding the scholarship or grant for multiple years, if available.

Many private and public sector entities and several private citizens sponsor a range of scholarships and grants. Many are based on academic prowess; others based on athletic prowess, or skill in some specific area. Sometimes eligibility can be mixed in with social criteria, such as you are the child of a single parent, a person who hails from a specific parish, or someone who has worked in a particular field, and so on.

In the early 1990s, I was an adult undergraduate facing significant financial odds and so I scoured newspapers, websites, and notice boards daily, never missing a single advertisement about a potential scholarship or grant. I was also a regular visitor at the Office of Student Financing to get information on every scholarship for which I was eligible.

Parents of bright, promising children, the children themselves, and every person who has a dream of tertiary education has a responsibility to do the necessary research early to find announcements about scholarships and grants for which they might be eligible.

The tuition for my master’s and PhD, as well as my personal costs, were funded entirely by two scholarships — a UWI MPhil and a Fulbright.

The range of scholarship options that go undersubscribed every year suggests that too many parents and potential tertiary students fail to plan ahead and prepare for what has now become a rite of passage for all Jamaicans, regardless of your class or community of residence. Therefore, it is now imperative that well-meaning parents of bright, but poor students begin to plan very early.

In the current economic climate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough benefactors willing to sponsor you or your child’s entire university education for three to five years, especially at short notice. When you take into account tuition, books, food, clothes, living expenses and/or transportation, this is a hefty sum. If you are an adult with a dream of tertiary education, you must begin to plan.

In the USA, the requirement is that, even with a scholarship you must be able to show the full amount to cover all your expenses for the academic year in your bank account, or in a guarantee from your scholarship donor, before you can be granted a new student visa. I recall some special moments during my doctoral study in Virginia where supportive Jamaican families would lend thousands of US dollars to student athletes on scholarship so they could lodge these funds to their accounts as evidence of resources in hand so their student visas could be renewed.

This “means test” is a strategy used to ensure that even scholarship students do not become a burden on the university, the state or country if they run out of funds along the way. Means tests form part and parcel of loan applications, as well as applications to pursue many of the most expensive full-fee paying degree programmes like law and medicine. Someone has to pay.

All this is the reality of ordinary and poor individuals with a dream of social mobility through education. Planning ahead for funding tertiary education; researching the best options; and using a combination of loans, scholarships, grants, savings, and summer employment will help to make the dream a reality.

Another truth is that there is no shame in taking a year or two to work and save after high school if your family is unable to send you to university. Gaining an education remains one of the greatest tools for social mobility; you must, however, chart your course.

Donna P Hope is professor of culture, gender and society at The University of the West Indies, Mona. Send comments to the Observer o r dqueen13@hotmail.com.