Despite what seems to be an imminent threat to certain jobs in the labour market, enrolment for traditional disciplines at the island’s largest tertiary institution, The University of the West Indies (The UWI), continues to hold steady, campus registrar Dr Donovan Stanberry has said.

According to Stanberry, aside from previous COVID-19 pandemic-induced fallouts exacerbated by prolonged inflationary and other financial environment challenges which have weighed on some aspects of the university’s business, enrolment at the 75-year-old institution remains at peak level, with interest maintained for most disciplines offered across several faculties.

“At The UWI we have not seen any significant abatement for enrolment in studies in traditional job areas such as law, medicine, engineering, and others. Medicine is probably the only one now which has seen some fall-off and that’s mainly due to associated costs which have resulted in a scale-back on the numbers we had before,” Stanberry told the Jamaica Observer.

“The applications remain strong; however, it’s just that in the last two years not many people have been able to take up offers, but we are now working with Government to see how best we can try to have this resolved and we continue to seek out stakeholder partners to offer more scholarships,” he said.

The registrar, in bemoaning declines seen in certain areas of study confined to the Humanities faculty, such as history, literatures in English and library studies, said that every effort is now being made by The UWI to bring about a revival in these areas.

The job functions for librarians is one being cited among a growing list of careers said to be up for extinction in a matter of years. This, as automation changes how things in that industry are done and as the use of technological devices such as Kindles, e-books and other digital advancements bring greater efficiency and reduced operational costs in that field.

“Reduced enrolment in these areas have been alarming, but we are now trying our very best to reinvent as a university in these areas,” Stanberry noted, as he touted the importance of these disciplines and the level of impact they have on critical thinking, which he deems a much-needed skill in the workplace.

“We have been doing cross-faculty collaborations, twinning disciplines where necessary to get more students in the weaker areas as we marry the traditional areas with those newer and sexier ones,” he said of the strategy being engaged.

Pointing to what he regards as a growing demand for new age career choices, the registrar also said that The UWI, like many other universities, has also seen increased enrolment for studies in technology within the last few years.

In sync with global perspectives which forecast the rapid growth of jobs in this area, a computer science or information technology degree has been one that is likely to open the door to many high-paying, in-demand career paths. This, as when compared with other industries, tech jobs usually report higher-paying salaries, faster growth and greater job satisfaction.

In countries such as the US where more than 100,000 computer science degrees have been conferred on undergraduates during the 2021/22 academic year, according to
Forbes statistics, this marks a substantial increase over the 87 college graduates who read for a degree in the area in 1967.

“Locally, at The UWI we have also seen where there is renewed interest and an uptick in areas such as software engineering and computer science — that department is growing by leaps and bounds and I suspect it reflects the new trend in the career area, especially as the later generation looks more to tech-based jobs,” Stanberry said.

Growing much faster than most other occupations in the modern era, employment in a computer-related or tech industry is projected to grow beyond 14 per cent from 2022 up to 2032, with individual fields growing about three per cent on average over the period.

Propelled by the digital revolution, the creation of roles for people adept in technology will see the rise of more experts in machine learning, natural language processing, data science, software development, and other AI-related fields.

As the fourth industrial revolution also continues to change the way we work, a greater focus on not only those digital but soft skills — such as creativity, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking — will also be important features in the future of work, studies have found.

“Other areas in which we have also seen noticeable increases are film/creative studies as well as some programmes in mass communication offered by CARIMAC, which have continued to hold their own. Studies in the Mona School of Business and Management department, which include economics, accounting, and others, also continue to rank as disciplines which remain hugely popular,” Stanberry said.

Cognisant of the current labour market realities, he said steps are now being taken by The UWI to create new areas of study to facilitate various interests and to fill-out enrolment gaps.

Current data now see some 16,000 registrations being done at The UWI Mona annually, down from pre-COVID levels when it registered 19,000-20,000 students. Despite the slight dip in enrolment, Stanberry said he remains optimistic that the numbers will increase as new courses are rolled out and as the university pivots to cater to new demands in the job market.

Learning institutions globally, having witnessed the unfolding of real life events such as the Great Resignation or Big Quit — which saw massive resignations across the US during the pandemic, to the current re-skilling revolution — have all come to realise that the status quo between education systems and the labour market is in fact undergoing an inevitable shift, to which they must respond.

“At The UWI, we know that we are only as relevant as we can continue to satisfy the current needs of our students and that of the labour market and as such, we continue to scan the environment to pick up on new trends, adjusting our programmes and courses accordingly. As we add new courses, we will also overhaul some of our existing programmes to incorporate new elements based on the trends,” Stanberry noted.

Further pointing to the university’s strategic 2022-2027 plan which seeks to introduce new short courses, the imminent roll-out of these, he said, will further help to expand pedagogical opportunities, offering new teaching modules and models.

“We are now seeing, based on global trends, where many individuals no longer want to be confined to years of study for a degree programme in a classroom; instead what they want are short certification courses to develop vital skills and competencies that will help them to get ahead in their career pursuits, businesses and professional lives. As a result of this, The UWI is now creating a new framework to increase the number of professional and short courses we offer.

“We will be doing it in a manner where persons can, after three or four of these short courses, be allowed to later on matriculate into a degree programme. It’s now a big thing world-over and we are also now looking to tap into it,” Stanberry told the Business Observer.

Already consulting with a number of employers and professional bodies across industries to determine the areas of demand, the aim, the registrar said, is to have more customised offerings in which employees can also be sent by their respective workplaces to receive additional training and continued learning in the requested areas.

“These short courses will embrace any area that is trending for which there is a demand and we are going to be aggressively marketing it as we partner with all interested stakeholders to ensure we deliver on this objective,” the registrar said.

“With our long history and solid foundation, The UWI will be leveraging all our advantages to keep ahead of the learning curve, because as an institution we are aware that the tertiary landscape has become very competitive, made up by a growing mix of local and foreign-based universities. We are therefore taking every step to ensure that we build on our years of teaching and research in order to cater to the needs of society as we respond to the needs of the labour market while providing sustainable solutions for our people,” he added.