Vice chancellor of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, Professor Hilary Beckles has issued a call to Jamaica’s Government for it to increase the operational budget for the campus.

Beckles, who made the call during The UWI Annual Council meeting on Friday, revealed that the Government’s operational budget for the institution is the lowest among all the other campuses, at less than 40 per cent.

“We’ve asked the Government to keep the contributions steady; don’t reduce those contributions any further. Already the Government of Jamaica is contributing just under less than 40 per cent of the operational budget of the Mona campus. This is the lowest of the campuses because at St Augustine and at Cave Hill it is somewhere between 50 and 60 per cent,” Beckles said.

Adding that the university is for the public good, Beckles said that “as a public university we were able to ask our Government to please, between all of you, do not allow your contributions to the UWI’s operational budget to fall below 50 per cent”.

He further stated that he believes 50 per cent is still “too low for a public university that is really primarily funded as a teaching university”.

“We are not funded as a research university. The excellent research that we do and that we are commended for is funded on a budget that is really, in fact, an extract of the teaching and learning and the diversion of some of that into faculty-driven research,” Beckles said, adding that most of the university’s research funds are primarily from international donors and the private sector.

At the same time, Beckles explained that the budgetary shortfall across all of the campuses is about US$50 million each year. This shortfall, he said, is between the approved budget and the cash allocations.

“The consequences of that are that we agree that we will own this, we will pursue these systemic deficits through our entrepreneurial activities. This deficit, Mona’s share of this will be 30 per cent; St Augustine, 34 per cent; Cave Hill, 20 per cent, and so on. So, we’ve allocated this $50-million shortfall based upon an approved methodology to the campuses. The important thing is that this gives us a campus-by-campus target to focus on,” Beckles revealed.

He said that for the Mona campus, this 30 per cent equates to US$15 million.

“Mona now knows that its entrepreneurial target going forward, it will not achieve it in year one [but in] year two, year three it will be in a good position to do so. And of course by the end of this strategic planning [it] would have met this target and that $15 million becomes something around [which] the principal and its team can wrap their minds around to pursue in the next couple of years. I am sure that the Mona campus will achieve this,” the vice chancellor said.