Higher Education in the Caribbean: A Partnership for Regional Development

The UWI Regional Headquarters, Jamaica W.I., Friday, November 6, 2026—The following editorial is authored by Professor Canute S. Thompson, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Undergraduate Studies, The University of the West Indies.

In an article entitled, “The Global Higher Education Landscape: Challenges and Opportunities”, published in September 2026, I advanced the view that The University of the West Indies (The UWI), as a major tool for development of the Caribbean, must reposition itself to take advantage of the opportunities spawned by, and embedded in, the threats and challenges facing higher education globally.

In early October, news emerged that the financial crisis facing the 145-year-old University of Nottingham was so severe that it was making drastic changes in its operations. These changes include switching from five faculties to three colleges, axing several programmes, and cutting some 560 jobs. Its modern languages and music departments will close, and its 73 research master’s programmes will be cut to 10. The university’s own spokesperson called it “among the most significant” transformations in its history. Similar situations obtain at other universities such as Aberdeen, Cardiff, Durham, Edinburgh, Kent, Lancaster, and Sussex. These cuts arise from the triple blows of rising costs, tighter restrictions on recruiting international students, and decreases in government funding to higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. Direct government grants, which provided 39% of UK university income in 2005/06, now provide about 12%; tuition fees supply more than half, and international students’ fees nearly a fifth. England’s regulator, the Office for Students, reported in November 2025 that nearly half of English universities were forecasting deficits.

British universities did not arrive at this moment in a single year. Their crisis was two decades in the making, one manageable reduction at a time. That should give us pause, because the trend is visible at home: the share of The UWI’s operating budget provided by contributing governments has fallen from 68% to 48% over roughly three decades, even as enrolment grew from about 30,000 to nearly 50,000 students. The UWI has absorbed that squeeze while rising into the top 3.6% of universities ranked by Times Higher Education. The question is “how long can any institution keep doing more with less”.

The Question of the Moment

Caribbean governments invest substantially in The UWI (the Caribbean’s only regional university), and, given the stage of the socio-economic development of the region and what is taking place in higher education, governments and university managers must engage in serious introspection and analysis.  This introspection and analysis will likely evoke many questions, but chief among them must be: 

How do we position and protect Caribbean higher education institutions to ensure that the goal of sustainable development is achieved, and that the mandate of The UWI to lead research and innovation and support access to quality higher education is fulfilled? 

This is the central question because most Caribbean citizens still do not access tertiary education, a fundamental component of sustainable development. Worldwide, 43% of young people of tertiary age were enrolled in 2023, up from 19% in 2000. In Jamaica, the last reported figure was about 27%; in Saint Lucia, about 16%. The overwhelming evidence shows that countries which have high levels of tertiary participation experience higher levels of innovation, productivity, wealth, and well-being for a majority of their citizens. For individuals the payoff is just as clear: World Bank research spanning 139 economies puts the private return to a university education at about 15% a year, higher than for any other level of schooling.  

Towards a Model for Leveraging Higher Education

To develop a regional model, we could look at India. Under the Indian tertiary system, the elite/top-tier universities undertake high-level research and share their findings with tier-two universities, as well as community colleges, and polytechnics which then translate those research ideas into applications, products, and services.  A parallel strategy is that teachers’ colleges continuously develop new approaches to pedagogy and teacher preparation designed to support the facilitation of critical thinking, creativity, and innovation at the primary and secondary levels. India’s transformation to become an ICT hub and factory, emerging from being a low tech and low wage society thirty years ago (when persons with PhDs were driving taxis), owes much to this strategic enterprise of collaboration among public higher education and post-secondary institutions. Today India’s technology sector earns an estimated US$315 billion a year, US$246 billion of it from exports, and employs nearly six million people.

The Indian model is ideal for the Caribbean. Adopting the Indian model means ensuring that The UWI remains at the forefront of research, but not in a purist and exclusive form.  The UWI must, while it leads research undertake innovation and expand its footprints in enterprise and deepen the culture of entrepreneurship among its graduates.  The adoption of the Indian model will require repurposing of some public tertiary institutions so that they focus on areas of strength and demand. Not every higher education institution needs to be a top-tier research university, though all should use research to inform product development and delivery.  

With respect to how the regional tertiary investment ecosystem may be protected, strengthened, and sustained, I offer four suggestions. These suggestions are rooted in a philosophy of improving access to higher education, increasing innovation outputs, lessening the dependence of higher education institutions on treasury-based governmental support, and changing the way universities operate.

Firstly, the binary options proposing that funding for higher education be shifted to the primary and pre-primary levels must be rejected. More creative funding for both is needed. Regarding the funding for The UWI, the UWI has committed itself to working with and within the roughly 50% level of contribution to its operations currently provided by Caribbean governments. Both the support of governments and the commitment of The UWI to work with that support are solid partnership positions.  A commitment to hold that 50% steady for the foreseeable future is a bold act of partnership.  It is appreciated that regional governments face some tough choices, given limited resources, but investments in education have been shown to have the down-stream effect of expanding the very resources governments draw on. 

In a 2020 publication, Education and Development, I discuss a mix of solutions which if implemented would ease cashflow challenges facing higher education institutions while simultaneously reducing dependence on central treasuries. These include decades-long bonds. The idea is not theoretical. At the start of 2025, the Mona Campus refinanced costly US-dollar debt through a J$3 billion Jamaican-dollar bond at a single-digit interest rate, saving roughly $120 million a year in debt service.  There are two other complementary approaches which should be considered. These are government-backed and bank-issued bonds with maturity periods of up to 40 years.  Under the first of these two the government is the guarantor and tertiary institutions pay the interest and the principal due at maturity. Bank-issued bonds are opportunities for banks to invest more in regional development. This strategy would be devised through banks using their extensive asset bases to issue attractive low-interest, higher education bonds which institutions would access based on their capacity to pay the interest, based on having invested the funds in income generating activities as well as operations which expand teaching and learning solutions which attract more students.

I also discussed the government-parents-private sector partnership long term finance model in which savings and investments for higher education which begin within a year a child’s birth is undertaken.  (A version of this idea, also proposed in 2020, is now taking shape in Jamaica: the HOPE for Children Trust Fund, announced in March 2025 and seeded with J$200 million, opens a government-funded savings account for eligible children born since August 6, 2022, which they can draw on from age 18 for education and training.

Secondly, there must be greater collaboration and less competition among publicly-owned higher education institutions across the region. The UWI must provide leadership in building capacity in research as well as to develop and execute partnerships for the translation of research ideas into products and services for the local, regional, and global markets.  These types of collaborations which are taking place with international, regional and governmental entities must be scaled-up.  This will require that tertiary institutions become more business-savvy and strengthen their revenue-generating approaches.  The situation in the United Kingdom where, after centuries of government support, universities are almost without government support is not a far-fetched prospect for regional higher education institutions over the next few decades. 

Thirdly, increasing the availability, and export, of stackable micro-credentials, executive education professional certificates, and market-relevant benchmark degree programmes priced sensibly and accessed with minimum bureaucracy. There are large markets in Africa and the Pacific, and the groundwork is already being laid: in November 2025 the Cave Hill Campus and the University of Ghana announced a joint medical degree, and in February 2026 The UWI agreed a memorandum of understanding with a delegation of more than 20 Nigerian vice-chancellors. These regions share our challenges and want our expertise in medicine, climate science, food security and renewable energy.  The moment calls for intensification of these initiatives. Governmental support to execute the required bilateral enterprises is key to the government-institution partnership and for reducing reliance on often challenged treasury-based support.

Fourthly, recognizing that higher education institutions are at risk, and that new approaches to partnerships are needed, the key question that arises is: What cost-cutting measures and savings can institutions achieve through more efficient operations?

Nottingham’s lesson is not that universities are doomed. It is that institutions which wait for a crisis are reshaped by it, while those that act ahead of it get to choose their own shape. The Caribbean still has that choice. Governments that hold their share steady, a university that earns more of its own way, and a regional system that collaborates rather than competes: that is a partnership worthy of the region The UWI was created to serve.