MANDEVILLE, Manchester — While welcoming plans for Mandeville to be one of four areas developed for education tourism, leaders and educators at the two tertiary institutions here say urban planning, including well-needed infrastructure, should be prioritised.

This follows Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett’s announcement last month that Mandeville is poised to benefit from education tourism.

Church Teachers’ College (CTC) Principal Dr Garth Anderson and head of the hospital and tourism programme at Northern Caribbean University (NCU) Victorine Petrekin, said Mandeville, often regarded as a university town, is centrally placed for education tourism but needs Government intervention to remedy woes.

“It has been a long-in-coming discussion about making Mandeville a university town to include NCU, for example, and at the time we had the Catholic College, which is no longer around, but there is CTC and Knox Community College,” Anderson said.

“This idea of Mandeville being a university town, can we get it off the ground and look at the ripple implication for the economy, for jobs, and for treating some of the social ills that are plaguing our various communities and indeed the entire society?”

He pointed to infrastructure challenges with access to reliable water support, and the ripple effect on housing. Mandeville and surrounding communities have struggled with water shortage issues for decades, and many households in Manchester, and the wider south-central Jamaica, have had to rely on rainwater harvesting.

“We can’t board all of the persons who would want to attend our tertiary institutions. We also have to look at the transport system and how we manage that in the town. Mandeville has become overcrowded,” Anderson argued.

Meanwhile, Petrekin said NCU supports the tourism industry by training students in hospitality and tourism management, and as such she is calling for support for students interested in studying tourism and hospitality.

“What I am hoping is that some of the tourism dollars would be placed into the education of young people who want to really be in tourism. For Manchester and the south coast, if we focus on ecotourism, rural tourism, and a part of the tourism dollar is used to educate these persons, I am sure that they will gravitate to it,” Anderson said.

She argued that NCU has been pivotal in supporting and building education tourism.

“We are very much into it, because our focus is not just paper-based but [also includes] the hands-on approach,” she said while pointing to NCU attracting international students.

“I think one of the things that attracts them is the principles that they go by. When you look at morality, at ethics… even if they are not Adventist, they come in and they get involved in everything,” she added.

ANDERSON… urges movement on the idea of Mandeville being a university town.