PRO-VICE-CHANCELLOR, Planning and Development, at University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica, Dr. Bhoendtdatt Tewarie observed, last week, that the world is now technologically driven and, if knowledge is what drives everything, then the role of education is important for the individual.

It is also of importance for the community, the competitive capacity of a country and the human resource base of this region, in dealing with the rest of the world, he said.

Tewarie made the observation at a news briefing hosted by CARICOM, in its Turkeyen Secretariat, at the end of a two-day brain-storming exercise in which 22 institutions in the regional grouping, including University of Guyana (UG) and College of The Bahamas, participated.

The programme afforded a comprehensive review of the respective institutions by top functionaries and Tewarie said UWI is moving to develop a competitive and tertiary training capacity to educate the peoples of the region.

“We also want to move to the next stage, where research becomes the base on which policy formulation will emerge out of entrepreneurship,” he offered.

He noted that, based on discoveries and research, conditions for the creation of businesses that are knowledge oriented can be created with the capability for innovation.

“It is not only important, in terms of what people are able to gain from education and carry in their heads, but for the way you can bring together people who are experts to do research that then informs policy decisions or action that is of importance and significance to the peoples of the region, in terms of their own viability in the world in which we live,” Tewarie posited.

According to him, it is in this sense that the 60-year-old UWI, which caters for 40,000 students around the region, graduates 66,000 annually and has 30,000 more who are involved in continuing education, becomes an important institution.

Tewarie said UWI has a strategic 2010 plan which calls for an increase in the student population, to about 62,000, as well as a greater proportion of graduates with research degrees.

He said many of the institutions which took part in the Turkeyen exchanges have lots of expertise which UWI also needs and vice versa.

At the same forum, Registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) in Barbados, Dr. Lucy Steward remarked that, without those tests, there would be no students to attend UWI and UG.

That is why she emphasised the education component stating, however, that, in the area of functional cooperation, CXC can share with CARICOM institutions a success story, as the two are as old as each other.

Steward said the functional cooperation networking that has been added across the region is something that CXC can share with the others.

For instance, in financing to show how CXC has been able to manage with subventions and fees while, like all the other institutions, it needs more funding.

Steward said CXC has also initiated a dialogue on science and technology, at the level of the institutions which need it and reminded that research really begins in the schools.

She acknowledged that the two-day conversations provided an opportunity for institutions under the CARICOM umbrella to put their heads together and see how gaps in regional needs can be filled.