The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, said it is willing to open its doors to Jamaican medical students who fled Ukraine after Russia launched a full-scale military invasion on that Eastern European country.

However, Campus Registrar Dr Donovan Stanberry told the Jamaica Observer that the students would be required to pay tuition fees in order to continue their studies. Additionally, issues relating to course matriculation would have to be sorted out on a case-by-case basis before students are granted admission.

“Preliminary discussions have been had between the university and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in terms of the possibility of the university accommodating those students,” Stanberry told the Observer on Thursday.

“The issue of the fees would remain, because we are not in any position whatsoever — sympathetic as we are to those students — to admit them in our system without paying the full fees,” Stanberry said.

He noted that there are about 55 students who receive Government subsidy, “but all of those spaces for the current financial year have already been allocated, and we just don’t have the wherewithal to offer any concession”.

Concerns have been raised about how the medical students would further their studies after they returned home.

The students decided to pursue tertiary studies at a more affordable cost in Ukraine but found themselves in the middle of the war which started on February 24.

At The UWI, tuition for medicine is US$28,000, and when subsidised by Government that goes down to US$5,800 yearly. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the full tuition ranges from US$3,500 to US$5,000.

Stanberry also said a determination would have to be made about the equivalence of the medical courses done in Ukraine with those at The UWI to decide where to place the students.

“We have a list of the students and we have been able to determine their CSEC (Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate) and CAPE (Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination) passes, and by virtue of that we have been able to determine that most of them would have normally matriculated here in our programme and, indeed, quite a few of them have applied here and were even made offers to do medicine, except when they were offered the full-fee paying option,” Stanberry said.

Outlining an example of the procedure for students to be accepted, he said, “But let us say that ‘John Brown’ has completed two years in the Ukraine, we would have to determine where in our system to place John Brown, and in order to make that determination we would need a transcript for him outlining the courses that he would have completed and in what grade.

“That kind of clinical determination would have to be made in respect of each student, and that would now tell us where in our system we could place the students. Would they be exempt from year one substantially but still carry a few year one courses if we have courses in our year one programme that they didn’t do in Ukraine?”

Asked if there were problems with availability of space for the students, Stanberry responded, “At this point, no”.